Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn has arrived at the High Court in London pristine, hinting to the cameras that she had won an Oscar. This Tuesday, March 29, the Dane sat in room 76 of the High Court in London surrounded by seven people on her salary (two public relations, a personal assistant and four lawyers). She, applied, took notes and pointed out even the most tangled technicalities that the lawyer came across Belinda McRaedefender of King Emeritus Juan Carlos I together with Sir Daniel Bethlehemand the judge Matthew Nicklin, analytical and didactic to the point of inexpressibility. The hearing finished off the judge’s resolution issued last Thursday in which he denied sovereign or state immunity to Juan Carlos I to be tried in London for Corinna Larsen’s lawsuit in which he is accused of three charges: harassment, defamation (with consequences economic) and illegal surveillance.
On the part of Corinna Larsen’s squad of lawyers, winners so far, a lot of presence for little news and little intervention. Alone James Lewis He participated in the hearing that lasted two and a half hours. Lewis has focused more on calendar and procedural issues than on judicial reasons, since the arguments of both parties have changed little.
The two legal teams will specify the dates, although it has been set May 30 as deadline for possible appeal that the lawyers of the king emeritus will foreseeably request, and, if it is rejected, at the beginning of July the first preliminary hearing of the trial of the former Spanish monarch will be convened. Even so, the judge has described the probable judicial process over one or two years. “We’re not in the appetizers yet,” Judge Nicklin has added in one of the few ironies that he has fostered at the hearing.
The tension between the judge and the defender of the king, Sir Daniel Bethlehem, has led the magistrate to say in a blunt tone: “The law is now my thing [resolución que retira la inmunidad] until the Court of Appeal says that it is not.
After more than an hour of dissertation by the defense attorney, Corinna Larsen’s turn has come, James Lewis, on behalf of the Danish, has taken the floor to issue two words: “Nothing new.”
Despite the argued resolution (27 pages) of the judge, the defense of Juan Carlos I insists that the monarch is for life, is part of the Royal House and sovereign immunity is an innate condition in him. The judge, on the other hand, separates official and state capacity from private and personaland also separates its activities after the abdication in June 2014, the withdrawal from public life in 2019 and the absence of official money allocation since March 2020.
The judge, who until now insisted that he only dealt with the immunity of the king emeritus before and after his abdication, has entered into the nature of the accusations, since some of the alleged stalking offenses were committed outside of English territorial jurisdiction. In the opinion of the magistrate, the parties should reformulate some of the accusations of harassment, as they should also reform the role of the general Felix Sainz Roldan, former director of the National Investigation Center (CNI), about his threats or coercion to Corinna Larsen, since if she acted as a state she could be included in international law. “It would be necessary to clarify if when the plaintiff’s domicile in Monaco was intervened, who did it and in what capacity”, the judge argued in his reasoning on the ambiguous role of Félix Sainz Roldán and the alleged crimes committed outside the English territorial jurisdiction .
The closet test
The judicial process that examines in the High Court of London the case of the ex-lover against the king ranges from international law in its most complicated form (there is no equal precedent in English jurisprudence) to the most outlandish arguments such as “the wardrobe test “: the defense of the king, to show that he is part of the Royal House, adduces, among other higher arguments, that “His wardrobe and his belongings have been in the Palacio de la Zarzuela since May 1962, although he now lives in Abu Dhabi.”
The fleet of employees of Corinna Larsen, on behalf of the lawyer Robin Rathmell, published a statement after the close of the hearing in which it says, in English and Spanish, the following: “The High Court of Justice of England has rejected the most recent attempts by Mr. Juan Carlos to frustrate the progress of my client’s complaint. My client appreciates the practical decisions of the Superior Court of Justice for the administration of the procedure and hopes that they will serve to limit further delays in the same. Mr. Juan Carlos “He has indicated that he will request leave from the Court of Appeal to appeal, but my client has full confidence in Judge Nicklin’s decision and will deal with such a request when appropriate. We have moved one step closer to a hearing on the facts in question.”
On the part of the king’s lawyers, they have been more succinct in publishing only in English: “His Majesty is very disappointed with today’s decision of the judge because he believes that he has strong and convincing reasons to appeal. Accordingly, he will take immediate steps to obtain the permission of Court of Appeal to appeal the judge’s decision.
money claims
Money was also briefly discussed at Tuesday’s hearing, however, it was left for the future. Corinna Larsen’s lawyers have told the judge that they need 235,000 pounds (250,000 euros) to pay for it. A procedure, the one that the judge asks about the costs, which was settled in less than a minute. Corinna Larsen pays her expenses and the king pays his.
The judicial process, in its entirety, has an economic reading, since Corinna Larsen alleges on the charge of defamation that it has generated economic losses by losing clients in the royalty of Saudi Arabia or Oman due to Juan Carlos’s defamation against her. Although the former lover has not put an exact figure on these money claims, the newspaper Financial Times He calculated them in “tens of millions of euros” in an interview granted by her. To this figure should be added the 65 million euros that Juan Carlos claims from the alleged commissions of the AVE to Mecca and another two digits (30) in millions that appear in the documentation of the case. If Corinna Larsen wins the lawsuit against the emeritus, the compensatory claims will be exorbitant.
Another option to conclude the legal dispute, which would also be expensive for Juan Carlos I, would be to obtain a out of court settlement to avoid trial as Prince Andrew has recently done, to shake off accusations of pedophilia from Virginia Giuffre. The parties have not recognized a compensatory amount, but the amount of 12 or 15 million dollars has been disclosed to silence Virginia and prevent the queen’s son from appearing before a US court.
The way things are going between Corinna Larsen and the King Emeritus, she’s willing to get the most out of him. In the corridors of the London courts, the representatives of the ex-lover of the king denied the possibility of an extrajudicial agreement. Virginia Giuffre also denied it for a long time.
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