The Infanta Cristina appeared in court yesterday to answer 400 questions directed to her by Judge Jose Castro. Her answer to many of the questions was, “I do not know” or “I am not aware” and when the questions became more probing, she became vague. Her stock reply was that she trusted her husband and was totally ignorant of the possibility of any attempt to commit fraud and tax evasion. Even when she was shown the invoices that related to items like the Harry Potter books, the Infanta claimed that she knew nothing of them.
In relation to the Nóos Institute, the infanta she said that, although she was a director, she was totally unaware of the fictitious employees in their family business. And of the 1.2 million euros that the king gave to her to buy the mansion in Barcelona, she said this was a loan and not a gift. Financial circumstances meant that they had only repaid 150,000 euros back but then she explained the king was her father and he trusted her. According to the princess, everything was handled by either her husband or their tax advisers who were brothers of her husband’s partner, Diego Torres.
Her evasiveness at times made the judge angry who felt that there was an awful lot of money spent that the Infanta claimed to know nothing about. Still, even the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor feels that she should not be imputed because Aizoon was a front company without any real activity. In order to prosecute, it would have to be shown that she knew that the money came from illicit sources, something which the Infanta emphatically denied during her testimony.
At the end of the day, the Infanta Cristina flew to Madrid to be with her father, the king and no doubt gave a lengthy explanation of what had taken place. I imagine she had a hard time convincing him that she knew nothing about her husband’s shady financial affairs. As our Spanish teacher pointed out, most wives know more about what their husbands are doing than they do themselves.
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