Former Spanish king Juan Carlos now in exile in UAE

AFP

Spain’s former king Juan Carlos, who went into exile this month in the face of graft allegations, is in the United Arab Emirates, the royal palace said on Monday, ending the mystery over his whereabouts.

The 82-year-old, who has long and warm relations with the Gulf monarchies, “traveled to the United Arab Emirates on August 3 and he remains there,” a spokesman said without giving further details.

In a surprise move, Juan Carlos announced on August 3 that he was leaving Spain to prevent his personal affairs from undermining his son King Felipe VI’s reign, but did not say where he would be going. The royal palace had up until now refused to reveal where Juan Carlos is living, saying he would announce it himself if necessary.

It was first reported that he had traveled to the Dominican Republic or Portugal, where he spent part of his youth, but Spanish daily newspaper ABC later said the former king had gone to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

While Juan Carlos is not under formal investigation, revelations by his former mistress, German businesswoman Corinna Larsen, raise legal questions about his financial affairs which officials are looking into in Spain and Switzerland.

The daily Tribune de Geneve has reported that a Swiss prosecutor is focusing on US$100 million which that late Saudi king Abdullah allegedly deposited in 2008 into a Swiss bank account to which Juan Carlos had access.

In conversations which were apparently recorded without her knowledge that were leaked to the media, Larsen claimed Juan Carlos had collected a payoff relating to a 2011 high-speed rail contract in Saudi Arabia that was awarded to a consortium of Spanish firms. The 450-kilometer link between Mecca and Medina was inaugurated in 2018.

Spain’s Supreme Court in June announced an investigation to determine whether the contract had involved the “crime of corruption in international transactions” and whether Juan Carlos was legally responsible — but only for acts committed after his abdication in 2014, because of the immunity he enjoyed until then.

Juan Carlos ascended the throne in 1975 on the death of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco and ruled for 38 years before abdicating in favor of his son Felipe VI in June 2014 — just two years after he apologized to Spaniards for jetting off on an elephant-hunting trip in Africa with Larsen as Spain grappled with a financial crisis.