“Already in 2014, during my induction into Parliament, I referred to the moral and ethical principles that citizens expect from us. Principles which concern us all without exception, and which prevail over all considerations whatever their nature, including personal or family. It is a passage from the traditional Christmas speech of the King of Spain that is likely to make people talk.
Without clearly evoking them, Felipe IV made a timid allusion to the scandals of recent months concerning his father, Juan Carlos. “In accordance with my convictions, it has always corresponded to the way of conceiving my responsibilities as Head of State in the spirit of reform which has inspired my reign from day one,” he added. This brief passage was Felipe VI’s only implicit reference to his father, never named in this speech, who went into exile in August in the United Arab Emirates and is the subject of three judicial inquiries.
Hidden Fortune Abroad
Broadcast as every year on television, this speech was eagerly awaited at the end of a difficult year for the image of the Spanish monarchy, coupled with the serious economic and social crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In March, faced with the multiplication of indications on the existence of a hidden fortune of Juan Carlos abroad, Felipe VI had renounced the inheritance of his father and had withdrawn from him his annual indemnity, estimated at nearly 200,000 euros.
Juan Carlos settled a tax slate of 678,393 euros in early December in an attempt to avoid money laundering prosecutions in an investigation into the use of credit cards linked to bank accounts in the name of an entrepreneur Mexican and a Spanish Air Force officer. Two other investigations target the ex-king, who reigned from 1975 to his abdication amid scandals in 2014.
One aims to determine whether he pocketed a commission in the context of awarding a contract to Spanish companies to build a high-speed train in Saudi Arabia in 2011. At the center of this case is a transfer of 100 million dollars that Juan Carlos would have, according to the Swiss newspaper La Tribune de Genève, received in 2008 from the former Saudi king Abdallah on an account in Switzerland. The other investigation was opened after a report from the money laundering prevention service and entrusted to the Supreme Court, the only one empowered to try a former sovereign.
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