Spain, Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office Investigates Bribes to King Juan Carlos

The Spanish Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has investigated Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, former lover of King Emeritus Juan Carlos, in London, alleging that the then monarch had received a bribe in 2011 for a railway contract in Saudi Arabia. Last year, the Spanish press published recordings in which Corinna spoke of the bribes received by Juan Carlos on the occasion of the signing of the contract for a high-speed line from Mecca to Medina, awarded to a Spanish company thanks also to the personal mediation of the sovereign. According to the recordings - obtained without the knowledge of the people involved by the former police commissioner José Villarejo, now in prison, for blackmail purposes - Juan Carlos allegedly demanded the payment of a million-dollar commission for the awarding of a Saudi railway contract to the Spanish company Ohl, in which he had played a mediating role; the money would have instead gone at least initially to Adnan Khasoggi's wife, the Iranian Sahpari Zanganeh, involved in the negotiations by the owner of Ohl, Juan Miguel Villar-Mir. According to Corinna's story (and as denied by him), the latter refused to pay the monarch and Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein herself advised Juan Carlos "not to touch money coming from Iran": "You are paid by the State to represent Spanish industry, you cannot accept it"; however, in 2012 the woman noticed a large bank transfer and the king explained that it came from Saudi Arabia. According to Spanish judicial sources, the prosecutor's office decided at the end of 2018 to proceed to verify whether there were sufficient elements to charge him with corruption in the context of an international transaction, an investigation that would concern the entrepreneurs involved in the contract rather than Juan Carlos, who as Head of State still enjoys immunity. The woman's lawyer specified that Corinna told investigators "what third parties had told her about the high-speed contract", underlining "the limited nature of the facts" of which she was directly aware.