👑 Infanta Cristina must pay €265,000; Urdangarin gets 6 years

On 17 February 2017, a three-judge court in Majorca did something that managed to be both a victory and an invoice. BBC News reported that it cleared Princess Cristina of being an accessory to tax fraud, and gave her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, a jail term of six years and three months.

The invoice came to €265,000 (£227,000; $282,000). BBC News reported that although she was absolved, the princess still had to pay it because she has civil responsibility for benefiting, albeit unknowingly, from illegal gains. In other words: not guilty, but not exactly out of pocket-money range either. The couple were not in court for the verdict, which BBC News said was subject to appeal. Both had denied wrongdoing.

How a princess got to the dock

The case began in 2010, BBC News reported, and became symbolic of perceived corruption among Spain's elites. Princess Cristina became the first member of Spain's royal family to go on trial since the monarchy's restoration in 1975.

The paper trail starts earlier in the file. On 3 April 2013, El País English reported that Judge José Castro had formally named her a suspect and ordered her to appear on April 27, because she was a director of the non-profit Nóos Institute and co-proprietor of the company Aizoon. The public anti-corruption prosecutor said he would appeal, having found no basis to suspect her involvement. El País reported that the Royal Household first refused to comment, then issued a statement expressing 'surprise' at the judge's change of position and 'absolute agreement' with the prosecutor's aim.

The judge's decision, El País reported, followed a year of emails fed to the court by Urdangarin's former partner, Diego Torres. On 25 June 2014, BBC News reported that the judge formalised charges of tax fraud and money laundering against her; in November 2014 it reported that the high court in Palma upheld the tax fraud charge and dropped the money-laundering one. Her lawyers said they were completely convinced of her innocence.

A trial the prosecutors did not want

When the trial opened on 11 January 2016, Reuters reported, her lawyers asked the judges to drop the criminal charges and the state prosecutor said there was insufficient evidence to back them. The charges had been filed privately by the anti-corruption group Clean Hands (Manos Limpias) under a Spanish instrument known as the 'people's accusation'. On 29 January, Reuters reported, the court said in a statement that it was upholding them. Her lawyer, Miquel Roca, told journalists: 'In the trial, we will continue to defend the innocence of the Princess with conviction and confidence.'

The accusation against her, as BBC News described it, was that she made personal use of Aizoon funds to pay for clothes and dance lessons for the couple's children and for work on the couple's Barcelona mansion, which reduced the firm's taxable profits. She faced up to eight years in jail if convicted: two counts, up to four years each, per Reuters. She denied it.

"He was in charge of the family expenses. I didn't get involved in that."

Princess Cristina, testifying at her trial, as quoted by BBC News, 3 March 2016

BBC News reported that she answered only the questions posed by her own lawyer, and that she told the court the company's business was not an issue that interested her because the children were small and the couple were busy. The Guardian, via Agence France-Presse, quoted her opening line: 'I will answer only my lawyer.' It is, as defences go, admirably economical.

The husband's column of the ledger

Urdangarin faced the heavier list. BBC News reported that he was accused of using the non-profit Noos Institute sports foundation he ran as a vehicle to win falsely inflated contracts from regional governments, then channelling the money to personal accounts via tax havens. The foundation is alleged to have received more than €6m of public money, most of it from the Balearic Islands and Valencia governments. That is the prosecution's account; both defendants denied wrongdoing.

The court's own sentencing was reported by BBC News as follows: Urdangarin, six years and three months; Diego Torres, eight years and six months; Jaume Matas, three years and eight months; nine defendants in all acquitted, the princess among them. BBC News described Matas as a former government minister.

The title went first

The coronet had gone well before the verdict. Real Decreto 470/2015, dated 11 June 2015 and published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado the next day, revokes her faculty to use the title of Duchess of Palma de Mallorca. It carries the signature 'FELIPE R.' and the countersignature of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy Brey. BBC News reported that she remained sixth in line to the throne.

A princess who is acquitted of tax fraud and still writes a cheque for €265,000 has, at least, been spared the indignity of the cheque being a surprise: the Royal Household was on record in 2013 as being 'surprised' by the whole business. MissesSlay notes that the documents read here contain no statement from the couple or the Royal Household on the verdict itself.