Spain’s King Felipe VI renounced any future personal inheritance from his father and stripped him of his retirement allowance amid reports that the former monarch held millions of euros in offshore accounts.
King Felipe decided “to relinquish any inheritance from Juan Carlos he might be entitled to, as well as any asset, investment or financial structure whose origins, characteristics or purpose may not be in accordance with the law,” Felipe said in a statement published online by the palace.
He denied any knowledge of being a financial beneficiary of a foundation called Zagatka or that he had any links to another foundation, called Lucum, as reported by the British newspaper Daily Telegraph. The London-based publication on March 14 reported that Felipe was named as a beneficiary of a 65 million-euro ($73 million) offshore fund that Saudi Arabia gave Juan Carlos when he was on the throne.
Felipe’s decision deals another blow to his father’s already-tarnished reputation and signals palace concerns about how his business dealing could damange the monarchy. Hailed as a hero for resisting an attempted coup against Spain’s nascent democracy in 1981, the final years of Juan Carlos’s reign were mired in allegations of corruption against his close associates, eventually precipitating his abdication in 2014.
The Saudi fund triggered speculation in Spain that the king himself had received illicit payments.
Felipe’s sister, Cristina, in 2014 was the first royal to face criminal allegations in court since the reinstatement of the monarchy in 1978. She was questioned about her knowledge of the financial affairs of her husband, Inigo Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball player and executive at Telefonica SA who is now in jail for embezzling public funds.
Juan Carlos’s popularity had already suffered a major blow in April 2012 when it emerged he’d taken an elephant-hunting trip to Botswana as the country was struggling to avoid a European bailout. He was forced to apologize to the Spanish people in a television broadcast.
Pressure on him increased as the connections between his son-in-law’s business activities and his trip to Botswana emerged. The former king was accompanied by Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a German aristocrat who said in a newspaper interview that she had an “intimate friendship” with the king. She also said Juan Carlos had asked her to find a job for his son-in-law Urdangarin.
Juan Carlos requested to make public that he had never informed King Felipe about either foundation, according to the statement. The former king retired from public life last year.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
