Public prosecutor in bid to pre-empt Nóos judge and block subpoena for Princess Cristina

Public prosecutor Pedro Horrach has submitted a 30-page document to the judge investigating the so called Nóos case stating that there is no evidence linking Princess Cristina to the alleged multi-million-euro siphoning off of public money to private interests on the part of her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin. Therefore, Horrach wrote, he will not seek to have the king’s youngest daughter named as a suspect in the case.

Princess Cristina had originally been called to appear before Judge José Castro on April 27 of this year, a request that was denied by a three-magistrate panel of the Palma de Mallorca Provincial High Court after Horrach appealed against the decision. However, the withdrawal of the princess’s subpoena was not definitive and Castro was due to gauge the opinion of the represented parties before deciding whether to renew the process of calling the Infanta to the stand.

“Memory is fragile,” Horrach said. “And I consider this a propitious moment to jog the memory.” The public prosecutor noted that “a large number of reports by the Government Comptroller’s Office, the Tax Agency, and the Economic Crime Group” have been filed to investigate the potential implication of the princess in the alleged misdemeanors of Urdangarin.

Horrach has publicly stated that he has not acted with the motive of covering for or defending anyone, but has worked within the law and ignored media coverage of the case. “If, in the course of these investigations, this prosecutor, as a member of the corruption and organized crime office, had detected evidence of criminal activity against Cristina de Borbón, I would have initiated the requisite judicial mechanisms.”

Of the accusations leveled at him for not supporting the judge’s call for Cristina to appear in court, Horrach said: “If any citizen has evidence or knowledge of any illicit activity or covering up on the part of this prosecutor, they should go to the authorities and file a complaint. Not doing do, and simultaneously speculating or claiming the existence of confabulations on the part of certain people carrying out their duties, is equivalent to the ‘smoke’ sold by Urdangarin and Diego Torres to the public administrations, allegedly.”

Urdangarin and Torres stand accused of skimming six million euros of public money from inflated contracts awarded by the regional governments of Valencia and the Balearics to stage sports and tourism events.