MADRID: The Spanish king’s brother-in-law was sentenced on appeal to five years and 10 months’ jail on Tuesday for embezzling millions of euros in a case that shamed the royals, the Supreme Court said.
Former Olympic handball player Inaki Urdangarin, 50, is married to King Felipe VI’s sister, Princess Cristina, but was sidelined from the royal family after the fraud scandal erupted in 2010.
The scandal contributed to the decision of Felipe’s father Juan Carlos I to abdicate in 2014. Urdangarin was found guilty last year of taking millions of euros (dollars) between 2004 and 2006 from a non-profit foundation he headed in the island of Majorca. He will now go to jail unless he makes a successful final appeal to the Constitutional Court — a possibility regarded as unlikely.
He lost his overall appeal on Tuesday, though the court overturned some of the lesser charges. That left him with a slightly shorter sentence than six years and three months he received last year.
The corruption scandal sparked outrage during Spain’s financial crisis when Urdangarin came to be seen as a symbol of the elite’s perceived corruption. The scandal soured the end of Juan Carlos’s reign.
He gave up the throne in June 2014 after 39 years, hoping his son Felipe VI could freshen up the image of the monarchy. Urdangarin and Cristina have been excluded from all of the royal family’s official public appearances since late 2011.
Felipe VI stripped the couple of their titles of duke and duchess of Palma. They now live in Switzerland with their four children. Urdangarin claimed he never made any decisions without the royal family’s knowledge. Cristina herself was also tried on charges that she helped her husband evade taxes, but the 52-year-old princess was acquitted. She was fined 265,000 euros on separate charges.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday also reduced that fine to 136,950 ($161,400) euros on appeal. - Embezzlement, money laundering - Cristina was the first member of Spain’s royal family to face criminal charges since the monarchy’s restoration in 1975.
Veteran cricket journalist Sharda Ugra said the sport is used as a vehicle for a muscular nationalism
The UAE saw record rainfall with 254 mm falling in less than 24 hours in Al Ain, a city on the UAE-Oman border
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese singled Guerot out for praise on Tuesday
The bill passed a vote in Britain’s parliament with 383 in favour and 67 against
The Supreme Court has previously refused to accept two formal apologies from Ramdev and his firm’s co-founder...
