The former lover of the former king of Spain, Juan Carlos, told a Madrid court about the “chilling” moment when she alleged that the country’s intelligence chief threatened her and her children at the behest of the monarch.
Corinna Larsen told the court that Félix Sanz Roldán met her in London after her relationship with the king ended, to warn her that if she did not follow his instructions, he could not guarantee her safety. She said she later returned to her home in Switzerland, where she discovered a book about the death of Princess Diana and later received an enigmatic phone call about tunnels, which she interpreted as an allusion to the princess’s fatal accident in 1997.
The allegations emerged during a one-day defamation trial filed by 2009-19 intelligence chief Sanz Roldán against a former police officer, José Manuel Villarejo, who he claims to have defamed him in a 2017 TV interview in which said he threatened Larsen’s life.
Villarejo, who has been in preventive detention since 2017 and awaiting trial on separate charges, including extortion, money laundering and bribery, faces up to two years in prison if convicted in the case of defamation and on another charge of making a false complaint.
Larsen, also known as Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, says she was pursued by Spanish intelligence agents after her relationship with Juan Carlos ended, which she abdicated in 2014 amid a drop in popularity. She said in her testimony to the Madrid court that threats were made against her because she had “information and documents relating to the financial and commercial transactions of the emeritus king and other members of the royal family”.
Proving evidence via a video link to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Friday morning, Larsen said he believed agents from a security company acting on behalf of Spain’s national intelligence center (CNI) occupied his home and office in Monaco in April 2012, and that the CNI police intended to steal your documents, clean computer files and install surveillance equipment.
After she was asked to vacate her home and office for five days so they could be “wiped out” by the agents, she complained to Juan Carlos. The next day, she received an email from a man she believed to be Sanz Roldán, the head of the CNI, who claimed that everything had been a misunderstanding.
She told the court that Sanz Roldán came to see her a month later at the Connaught hotel in London, acting at the behest of the king.
“The general explained several conditions, instructions and recommendations that I should follow,” said Larsen.
“He said that unless I followed them, he could not guarantee my physical safety or the physical safety of my children. sure [the words] terrified me. I think anyone would be terrified. The fact that the head of the Spanish intelligence services traveled to London to find me was frightening. “
Larsen then returned to his home in Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland, where he discovered that a copy of a book on the death of Princess Diana had been left on his coffee table.
The next day, she told the court, she received a call from an unknown number and was informed, in Spanish, that there were “many tunnels between Monaco and Nice”. The call, Larson said, brought home “the reality of the threats and danger I found myself in.”
She said she met Villarejo in April 2015, after one of her closest friends said Villarejo had information about how the CNI intended to implicate her in criminal activity. It was during that two-hour meeting that Larsen told her about the meeting at Connaught and what she described as Sanz Roldán’s threats.
Sanz Roldán denied making any threats when he testified on Friday and said Villarejo’s comments during the TV interview were liars.
“I have never, ever threatened a woman or child – never,” he told the court. He said his presence in London in May 2012 was a matter of public record, but he could say no more because he was subject to the laws governing intelligence work. However, he stressed that the CNI can only operate in Spanish territory and within Spanish law.
The public prosecutor dropped the defamation suit against Villarejo on Friday, but the state attorney did not follow suit.
Juan Carlos announced that he would leave Spain in August, after a series of damaging denunciations of his financial deals that contaminated the monarchy and shamed his son, King Felipe VI, who deprived him of his annual stipend.
It is alleged in documents from Swiss prosecutors that Juan Carlos received a $ 100 million “donation” from the king of Saudi Arabia, which he placed in an offshore account in 2008. Four years later, he allegedly donated € 65 million of that account to Larsen .