Juan Carlos pays 678,000 euros to the Treasury but not …

From Madrid. The former monarch of Spain Juan Carlos de Borbón, which since last August has benefited from voluntary exile in Abu Dhabi, suffered a resounding failure in its latest attempt to launder its accounts and public image. The father of the current king, Felipe VI, who since his abdication in June 2014 receives the treatment of king emeritus, tried last week to repay its debts to the Treasury with a voluntary payment of 678,000 euros for unreported income between 2016 and 2018.

According to an ongoing investigation, during this period, when he was no longer head of state and was therefore not covered by the immunity with which the Spanish Constitution protects monarchs, Juan Carlos and part of his family used credit cards, the fees of which were paid by Mexican businessman Allen Sanginés-Krause. These revenues, which, according to the investigation, did not benefit either Felipe VI or his wife, Queen Letizia., have never been declared to the Treasury.

Spanish law establishes that if a taxpayer makes an additional declaration, after the deadline for settling his tax debt, he is exempt from the criminal liability in which he could have incurred. This was apparently the intention of the lawyers of Juan Carlos, who expressed to his relatives his intention to return to Spain to spend the Christmas holidays with his family.

However, the game can go wrong. Spanish law establishes that parallel declarations, as this type of improvised deposit is called, in order to have legal effects must be spontaneous, truthful and complete. If the former king had been warned that he was the subject of an investigation, as is suspected, the payment made voluntarily would not meet the requirement of spontaneity and therefore would not be sufficient to stop the judicial investigation. The prosecution itself informed this in a statement. “At the end of the meeting held by the prosecutors in charge of the investigation, The public prosecutor’s office will assess the scope of the tax declaration presented by Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón on December 9, its spontaneity, veracity and completeness., as part of a larger investigation that will continue to be carried out by the Supreme Court’s prosecutor’s office, ”the note said.

As reported by several Spanish media, the father of Felipe VI, who reigned between 1975 and 2014 and is claimed by broad sectors as the father of modern Spanish democracy, is the subject of a triple investigation, all linked suspected tax offenses. One, the most important, is related to the possible existence of an account in Switzerland in which commissions for construction work have been paid the high-speed train between the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Mecca; the second was opened after a report prepared by the executive service of the Commission for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Monetary Crime (SEPLAC), and the third concerns the use of credit cards.

The Spanish Penal Code only provides that tax regularization allows those who repay their debt to the Public Treasury to avoid the crime before the administration or the justice system to file a complaint or complaint or to take actions that allow them to have “formal knowledge of the opening of the procedure”. What will have to be established now if the opinion that Juan Carlos de Borbón’s lawyers apparently received is of this consideration.

But beyond legal considerations, recent events have reactivated public debate on the status of the former king and even on the validity of the monarchical institution.

The attempt to regularize part of his debts to the Treasury had the opposite effect for Juan Carlos de Borbón. No statement is ever made about the king’s environment, much less on matters of this nature, but some Spanish media have claimed that Felipe VI is against the return of his father and less for the moment. He fears that his presence in Spain will reactivate a still latent debate which has no other effect than the erosion of the monarchy. Apparently, the government is of the same opinion, although Pedro Sánchez repeats over and over again that it is a decision that only corresponds to the royal family.

To reduce the pressure on the monarchy, the executive would assess the possibility of remove Juan Carlos from the title of King Emeritus which was granted to him at the time of his abdication and which places him at the protocol rank of privilege.

The question, in any case, has once again opened a wedge between the two parties that make up the government, the Socialist Party and the United We Can coalition. Although the PSOE formally declares itself as a Republican Party, its loyalty to the monarchy since the Constitution was approved 42 years ago has been unwavering.

A very different case is that of the two forces that make up the other government formation, Podemos and Izquierda Unida (and its main party, the Spanish Communist Party), who actively campaign for the arrival of the Third Republic. These days and after the latest events, Podemos released a video with the background music from the Narcos series and images of the royal family, some current and others in which she appears. then prince Juan Carlos with dictator Francisco Franco. This initiative caused discomfort in the more moderate sectors of the PSOE.

Although the change of form of the state through a constitutional reform for which there is not even remotely the necessary correlation of forces is absent from the political agenda of the government, its second vice-president and secretary general of Podemos , Pablo Iglesias, do not miss the opportunity to repeat that the change of scenery is closer than you think.

On the other side of ideological advice, the evidence that Juan Carlos de Borbón defrauded the public treasury has created an unquestionable situation of discomfort. After the ex-king’s self-exile, the three right-wing parties, the Popular Party, Vox and Ciudadanos have tightened ranks around the monarchy and they accused the “social-communist” government of trying to change the constitutional system. Now, after the evidence of tax evasion, these unconditional supporters have found some nuance. The Popular Party, the main opposition force, has taken refuge in unwavering support for Felipe VI and calls his father’s problems with the Treasury a private matter. They also claim their status as “Architect of the transition“.

Some leaders, however, are still thirteen years old. The President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, is the one who went further. In a flash of frankness during a debate in the autonomous chamber, he defended the privileges of the royal family. “We are not all equal before the law,” he said.