The King Emeritus addresses it in his memoir Juan Carlos I of Spain. Reconciliation, edited by Stock, the fundamental aspects of a long life, some of its most intimate, political and personal aspects, but briefly goes through the origin of his fortune and finances which still remain unclear. It is precisely this aspect that has damaged its reputation the most, which has generated more doubts and unanswered questions. And the one that, as he himself recognizes in this book, pushed him to make the decision, in the summer of 2020, to leave the Palacio de la Zarzuela and settle in his new residence in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates).
The only explanation for part of this mystery came five years after EL PAÍS revealed the existence of a Swiss account with 100 million dollars (65 million euros), transferred in 2008 from the Ministry of Finance of Saudi Arabia and the donation of this amount by the then head of state to his then partner Corinna Larsen. A donation forced by the bank’s decision to close his account when the elephant hunting scandal broke out in Botswana. “It was the pressure of the media and the government, after the revelation of a bank account I had in Switzerland and due to completely unfounded accusations, I decided to leave so as not to hinder the smooth functioning of the Crown or disturb my son in the exercise of his duties as sovereign,” he explains.
The account at the Gonet & Cie bank was registered in the name of the Panamanian Lucum foundation, of which Juan Carlos I was the first beneficiary and his son Felipe VI as the second. “A gift I couldn’t refuse. A serious mistake… An act of generosity from one monarchy to another,” he says. With that fortune he aspired to cover his family’s needs and “secure my retirement from official Spanish life”, according to his testimony.
This gift (gift) – as it appeared from the income document compiled by the account manager, Arturo Fasana – was the financial cushion that the then King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia gave to his “brother” for a new life project with Corinna Larsen, with whom Juan Carlos I was thinking of abdicating and marrying, a project that he does not confess in his memoirs, in which he defines the relationship as “the weakness of a man”. But when the scandal broke, some of his closest friends came clean in their defense. Especially when it emerged that the Swiss prosecutor Yves Bertossa was investigating this payment as an alleged commission for the AVE works in Mecca built by a group of Spanish companies. A case closed due to insufficient evidence, but in which Bertossa highlighted his intention to “hide” this fortune.
Matte foundations
And concealment is the most precise word to define other payments, “gifts”, accounts and foundations in which the then head of state appeared after his appointment as king in 1975. Such as his presence as a third party beneficiary in the Zagatka foundation of his distant cousin Álvaro de Orleans, from which he received seven million euros in payments for private flights in eleven years and for which he had to pay 4.3 million to the treasury since they were undeclared payments in kind. This foundation was created in Liechtenstein on October 1, 2003 and opened an account at the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, where it managed more than 10 million euros.
The decision of the King’s House to withdraw the budgetary allocation took place in March 2020, the day after EL PAÍS published that the King Emeritus was listed as the third beneficiary of this foundation, in which Philip VI appeared in fourth place and his sisters Elena and Cristina in fifth and sixth. Zarzuela then specified in a statement that Felipe VI was “completely unaware” of his designation as a beneficiary of the Zagatka and Lucum funds. And he added that he would resign.
A fortune in the Virgin Islands
The memoirs of the king emeritus do not even shed light on the opaque assets of 15 million euros that Juan Carlos I had kept hidden since 1995 in the British Virgin Islands and Jersey with the help of his friend and administrator Manuel de Prado y Colon de Carvajal, who he presented to the Arab kings as “my banker”. The largest transfer to that dark fund was made by Simeon of Bulgaria from a Swiss account. And he helped manage the king’s foreign funds for a time.
In 2004, the then head of state decided to transfer ownership of this fortune to Romero Maura, a close collaborator of the administrator. According to what the latter declared to the managers of the dozens of banks through which the money circulated, the then king feared that his existence would be revealed and that this would damage the reputation of the monarchy. Today this money ended up in the hands of a British NGO by express will of Romero Maura, now deceased.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office investigated the JRM 2004 trust fund (the initials of Romero Maura) and its relationship with Juan Carlos I, but closed the case after verifying that since 2004 the king emeritus was not its beneficiary, nor is there evidence that he received any sum from its accounts. But the mystery of the origin of the money, before it was transferred to Colón de Carvajal’s trusted man, remains unsolved. The transfer was a move similar to the one he repeated years later with Corinna Larsen by giving her 65 million euros.
In Abu Dhabi, Juan Carlos I did not hide from his trusted people his discomfort with the management of this money which he still considers his property. Like the Swiss fortune claimed in a recent lawsuit by her ex-partner, despite the fact that the donation indicated it was “irreversible.”
In the over 512 pages of the book, written by the king emeritus together with Laurente Debray, the 10 million dollars received a few months after his coronation from King Khaled Bin Abdelziz of Saudi Arabia and other data then “to help the Spanish monarchy” are not explained; nor the 1.7 million that Juan Carlos I delivered in Geneva in 2010 in a suitcase to his manager Fasana, claiming that it was another “gift” from the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa; nor the six million that Corinna Larsen received from Kuwait and Bahrain, weeks after a trip to both countries by the then head of state.
