The new defense John Charles I has given a twist to his approach defeated by the sentence of March 24 of Judge Matthew Nicklin: he no longer maintains that he deserves immunity before the acts of harassment that he denounces in his lawsuit Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.
The categorical affirmation, without extenuating circumstances, of that sentence according to which if “Juan Carlos I enters a London jewelry store and steals a diamond ring, he cannot, according to the defense, submit to a civil or criminal procedure in the United Kingdom. That cannot be & rdquor ;.
The devastating sentence on the quality of “sovereign” and “former head of state” has led the lawyers at the Carter-Ruck law firm to change strategy. They accept that Juan Carlos I does not request immunity for being sovereign or former head of state.
state espionage
Now he supports the other two points of the initial position: Juan Carlos I is a member of the Royal Household (‘royal household’, in English) and the acts of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) Spanish denounced by his ex-lover Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in London, Monaco and Switzerland, have been carried out in the capacity of servants of the State of the CNI.
The lawyers maintain, for example, in relation to the Royal House, that Juan Carlos I appears on the website of the House of His Majesty the King Philip VI.
And that Judge Nicklin’s argument, on March 24, that the determining factor to consider the emeritus member of the Royal House, is the test that the Civil Court of Appeals has raised, namely, economic dependence, in this case of Juan Carlos I regarding the Real home.
Corinna’s lawyers maintain that appearing on the web is irrelevant. For example, they point out that while members of the Royal House are forced to declare gifts from the transparency legislation of 2020, Juan. Carlos I has not done it.
The assertion that the CNI acted by presumably harassing Corinna in her state functions means, therefore, that Juan Carlos I is invoking his immunity as being under the umbrella of the CNI’s immunity.
Already the lawyer-barrister Daniel Bethlehemwho is also part of the new Carter-Ruck team, stated in the hearings last December that, precisely because the CNI and its servants and agents -in the first place its director at the time, General Felix Sanz Roldan– acted in their capacity as officials of the Spanish State, Juan Carlos I would be defenseless in the English procedure. Because Sanz Roldán and other agents could not testify protected by the immunity of the Spanish State.
The CNI’s argument
It gives the impression that Juan Carlos I, advised by his defense, has agreed to take the argument about the CNI to the end, namely, that the intelligence service had some performances (Corinna accuses them of entering their homes in Switzerland, Monaco and London, tapping their phones and computers, and keeping track of her, her domestic employees and her employees in this case).
The fact is that this will be followed with concern by the current director of the CNI, Hope Castelleiro. Why? Because she testified as a witness in the oral trial of Sanz Roldán’s complaint against the former commissioner Jose Manuel Villarejo.
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And he could see that Sanz Roldán – who lost the trial – declared as a witness that the CNI could not act abroad and that it had not acted in London in the follow-ups to Corinna.
However, Sanz Roldán confirmed that he traveled on May 5, 2012 to meet Corinna at The Connaught hotel in London, although he said that the content of their conversation was a secret matter.