Spain top court probes former king in $100mn Saudi bribe case
Spain’s Supreme Court has launched a probe into whether former King Juan Carlos received millions of dollars in kickbacks from Saudi Arabia in a rail deal.
In a statement released on Monday, the general prosecutor’s office said the court was looking into allegations that the king had been bribed by Saudi Arabia to facilitate the construction by a Spanish consortium of a $9.3 billion high-speed railway linking the Saudi holy cities of Medina and Mecca.
It said the inquiry “pertains to the second phase” of the rail line construction project.
“This investigation focuses, precisely, on establishing or discarding the criminal relevance of deeds that happened after June 2014, when the King Emeritus was no longer protected by inviolability,” it added.
Juan Carlos abdicated in June 2014 after nearly four decades on the throne, losing protection granted by Spain’s constitution to the head of state.
Given the investigation’s “institutional significance” and “undeniable technical complexity,” it would be carried out by one of the top court’s chief prosecutors and three assistants, according to the general prosecutor’s office statement.
Back in March, Switzerland’s La Tribune de Geneve newspaper reported that Juan Carlos, while he was king, received $100 million from Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 2008, three years before the rail contract was awarded.
The Swiss daily added that the Spanish king later gave $65 million to Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a businesswoman with whom he had a relationship.
The revelation led Juan Carlos’ son and successor, King Felipe VI, to renounce any inheritance from his scandal-hit father and end his annual palace allowance of over $217,000.
In addition to the probe underway in Spain, Swiss prosecutors are investigating an account operated for Juan Carlos to which millions were allegedly transferred by Saudi King Abdullah.
The offshore account, named as the Lucum Foundation, was set up in Panama in July 2008, and tied to an account with Geneva’s Mirabaud private bank, the Daily Telegraph reported.
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