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Switzerland Drop Money Laundering Investigation Linked to Spain’s King Emeritus

Geneva’s chief prosecutor said on Monday that he had closed a criminal investigation into allegations that King Emeritus Juan Carlos I of Spain laundered “kickback” payments from Saudi Arabia due to insufficient evidence.

A Swiss private bank implicated in the criminal investigation, which lasted three years, was fined for a misinformation.

Prosecutor Yves Bertossa said in a statement that he had established that Riyadh had paid US $ 100 million in August 2008 into an account opened a month earlier at the private bank Mirabaud in the name of a Panamanian foundation whose final beneficiary was Juan Carlos.

But he added that he had not been able to prove a sufficient relationship with a contract awarded three years later to Spanish companies for a high-speed rail connection in Saudi Arabia.

The Spanish Royal House declined to address the matter. Juan Carlos, who lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates, could not immediately be reached for comment.

“The investigation has established that Juan Carlos I did receive 100 million dollars in the account of the Lucum foundation at Mirabaud & Cie SA in Geneva, from the Saudi Ministry of Finance on August 8, 2008,” said Bertossa.

The use of a foundation and accounts in tax havens by several protagonists of the case had shown a “will to hide”, but had not been able to sufficiently prove the relationship between the Saudi payment and the contract for the railway connection between Medina and La Mecca, he stressed.

Additional payments of nearly $ 9 million from Kuwait and Bahrain were received into the accounts of Juan Carlos and his former German-born lover, Corinna Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Bertossa said.

She received the balance of 65 million euros (US $ 73.3 million) from the Mirabaud account, which was closed in June 2012 and the funds were transferred to her account in the Bahamas, the prosecutor added.

Charges brought against five defendants, who according to court documents included an asset manager, a lawyer and a banker, as well as Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein and the Mirabaud bank, for alleged “aggravated money laundering” were dismissed, Bertossa said. . Juan Carlos was not among the suspects charged.

“Today I was finally acquitted of any crime in the three-year investigation carried out by the Swiss prosecution,” Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein said in a statement sent to Reuters.

“My innocence was evident from the beginning and this episode has served to further harm me as part of the ongoing campaign of abuse against me by certain Spanish interests.”

The Mirabaud bank was fined 50,000 Swiss francs (US $ 54,100) for failing to report an account with unusual activity, according to the prosecutor’s statement.

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