Spain: Elephant hunting could lead to more legal problems for King Emeritus Juan Carlos

A decade after that gesture of vanity that led him to photograph himself in front of a recently hunted elephant and with a rifle in his hand in Botswana, Africa, the photo continues to give King Emeritus Juan Carlos I of Spain a headache: could be accused of tax fraud if you don’t find how to justify who paid for the flights and expenses you incurred in the hunts you participated in after you abdicated in 2014.

And although Juan Carlos has been, since August 2020, self-exiled in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, for allegedly shady financial relations, in the last year the Revenue Agency asked for explanationsaccording to the newspaper The worldon who paid the expenses related to the hunts he was part of.

Making’s claim also includes the gifts you have received when he was no longer king or head of the Spanish state and, therefore, did not have the much discussed immunity that covers kings.

If the amounts for which the Treasury asks for explanations exceed 120,000 euros, Juan Carlos risk a crime of tax fraud. And even if the sum was less, he would have to negotiate with the Department of Financial and Tax Control.

The beginning of the end

Despite the fact that the snapshot of Juan Carlos with the elephant and the rifle, which was recorded in the imagination of the Spaniards as proof of disenchantment with a politically incorrect king, is from 2012 -two years before the Bourbon renounced the throne in favor of his son Felipe VI- that image was the kick-off of his free fall.

Literally: during that trip, Juan Carlos I fell and broke his hip. In a more symbolic sense: it became known, as a consequence of his fall, that I hadn’t traveled alone but in the company of Corinna, Corinna Larsen, the close friend who made her life more difficult.

“Sorry I was wrong. It won’t happen again”at the time it was the mea culpa of the Bourbons.

On this new fiscal front involving the King Emeritus, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, said: “The Revenue Agency is independent in the development of its activities and I too have full confidence in it”.

“I think he has always shown his professionalism”Montero added.

For Carlos Cruzado, president of the Union of Finance Technicians, “in the event that an increase in assets could be attributed to him, because he cannot justify those expenses, would invalidate the supplementary declaration you filed“.

The “complementary declarations” refer to the two regularizations that Juan Carlos I made since he stopped living in Spain.

The fiscal mess

In December 2020 made a payment of almost 680,000 euros for donations and, two months later, another for almost 4,400,000 euros for travel and gifts received by the Zagatka Foundation, chaired by a cousin of his.

If we did not include the expenses that the Treasury now demands, those regularizations “would not have those liberating effects of possible tax crimes”, said the president of the Treasury Technicians Union.

Juan Carlos, who had returned to the kingdom in mid-May to participate with his ship, the rascal, in the regattas of the Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo, in Galicia, had planned to return to Spain this weekend. However, from the surrounding environment they announced that the emeritus would not be traveling this time “for personal reasons”.

In March, the prosecutor’s office of the Spanish Supreme Court found it it was not possible to open a criminal case against him for the alleged collection of commissions in the works of the fast train to Mecca. And that it was not feasible for using cards with undeclared funds or for alleged accounts in tax havens.

To the relief of Juan Carlos I, the three investigations were closed because not enough evidence was found, because the offenses were prescribed or because the emeritus was protected by the inviolability of his position when he committed those acts.

Still has to deal with, however, the harassment report that Corinna Larsen filed against him in the UK.

The High Court of London ensures that Juan Carlos he has no legal immunity there after his abdication, so the harassment lawsuit can go on.

The king emeritus has confessed to his son that he has no intention of moving from the Emirates. But who wants to come to Spain often.

“I prefer, at the moment, for reasons that belong to my private sphere and that concern only me, continue to reside permanently and permanently in Abu Dhabi”Said Juan Carlos in the four-paragraph letter he sent to Felipe VI and which he signed not as“ king ”but as“ father ”.

“I am aware of the importance of past events in my private life and I sincerely regret this,” he admitted.

“I also feel legitimate pride of my contribution to democratic coexistence and freedoms in Spain ”, he added.

The visit of the Bourbon to Spain, the first in almost two years, has stirred things up. Especially his answer to the question of whether he intended to explain his behavior to Spanish society.

“Explanations of what”? The king emeritus feigned dementia.

On the part of the PSOE-Podemos coalition government, it was impossible to avoid a comment that consisted of regretting that Juan Carlos “had missed the opportunity to explain and ask forgiveness for unethical or exemplary acts “.

The whims of the Bourbon while on the throne led the National Trust to ascend own hunting lodge inside the Palacio de la Zarzuela: about 1,000 square meters – which no one uses today – but which house the hunting trophies of Juan Carlos, 84 years old. The same one that, when he turned 10, he asked the Kings for an air pistol, a shotgun and a hunting knife to clean what he was hunting.

PB