Urdangarin judge believes Nóos associate’s emails are genuine
Royal son-in-law shown to be engaged in suspect institute dealings after king had warned him off
The judge hearing the Urdangarin case said on Wednesday that he believed emails handed over by the onetime business partner of Iñaki Urdangarin, Diego Torres, referring to the royal son-in-law’s conversations and negotiations as head of the Nóos Institute, are genuine.
In a written judgment, the investigating magistrate José Castro argued that the messages, which had been contested by one of the lawyers in the case, came from computers at the non-profit Nóos organization and that no one else had questioned their authenticity. The latest batch of emails provided by Torres suggest that the Royal Household, via Princess Cristina’s secretary, Carlos García Revenga, knew about, supported and favored Urdangarin’s business dealings.
Together the messages offer an account of Urdangarin’s lucrative dealings. At the same time as he was earning hundreds of thousands of euros from hand-picked contracts given out by the Popular Party-run regional governments of Valencia and the Balearics between 2004 and 2006, he was also talking to King Juan Carlos’s friend, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, about a role at the Laureus Foundation that would have provided him with an annual salary of over 200,000 euros.
The mails also detail how Urdangarin continued to do business with Torres a long time after the Royal Household supposedly ordered him to sever all ties with Nóos after learning about his ties with the regional governments.
