It seems like a platitude truth. But just as in 1998 and 1999 the judicial committee of the UK House of Lords decided, as a supreme court, after long debates, that the torture of Chileans and foreigners by the former dictator -and former head of state- Augusto Pinochet could not be considered a government task -an official act-, and for which it lacked immunity for the crimes of torture committed after the signing of the international treaty by the United Kingdom, it will now be up to the Court of Appeals, civil division, of the Court of Justice of England and Wales, to hear and decide, in the month of next October, if the acts of harassment denounced by the ex-lover of John Charles I they were “official acts performed under the color of State authority”. The judges, therefore, will have to hear and decide if the current king emeritus has the right to a “functional immunity” (Latin call material ratio) for the facts described in your ex-lover’s civil lawsuit Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein between 2012 and June 2014, the date of his abdication, or not.
Since this past Monday, July 18, it has already been established that all the other events, from point 25 to 54.3, which fill the demand between 2014 and 2020they will be investigated by the judge in charge, Matthew Nicklinand, if the evidence that Cortinna’s lawyers will provide is convincing – and not imponderable – the investigation could end in a trial.
He left John Charles I I live from the hands of two prosecutors – that of Swiss and of Spain without having the category of accused/investigated, but in the United Kingdom it is part of the procedure in which he has had to appear.
And pay a fortune – where do the large funds to pay lawyers and costs come from is a mystery that John Charles I reveals on the website of the Royal House of Philip VIwhich proclaims transparency, a house to which it claims to belong? -, which only for having lost the first battle of immunity rises to €271,000not counting the bill from the law firm -Clifford Chance- which the emeritus has decided to replace with Carter-Ruck, perhaps on the recommendation of his generous guests in the United Arab Emirates.
lesson to learn
What preliminary lessons can be drawn from Judge Nicklin’s sentence, which denied the immunity of Juan Carlos I on March 24 for democracy, the activity of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and Justice in Spain?
Although the now former Attorney General of the State, Dolores Delgadotrusted during the investigation, in private, according to sources consulted by El Periódico de Catalunya, that John Charles I He would, at least, be called to give a statement before the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office, regarding the three ongoing investigations in 2020, 2021, until the beginning of March 2022, this did not happen.
“There was not always unanimity, we maintained discrepancies, but I opted for the majority position that was based on the tendency of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court,” Delgado wrote in the newspaper El País, on June 27, 2022.
“Trend of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court”. All he said in an order, which did not sentence, about a tax crime complaint against Juan Juan Carlos I, in 2014, is that “as highlighted by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, article 56.3 of the Constitution provides that the person of the king is inviolable and is not subject to responsibility, therefore, it cannot be prosecuted for acts carried out during its magistracy”. That is to say: the then attorney general is based on the “tendency of the Supreme Court” that in a single article of the mentioned order is based on… the Prosecutor’s Office.
another way
But while in London, the judges will try to delimit official and private acts, in Spain it was not even necessary, although also, to go that way. There was another option. Because the invocation with eyes closed to article 56.3 of the Constitution, omitting that in it, after the declaration of inviolability of the king it is said that “his acts will always be endorsed in the manner established in article 64, lacking validity without said referendum” (They will be endorsed by the President of the Government and, where appropriate, by the competent ministers).
As the Professor of Criminal Law wrote, Luis Rodriguez Ramosin March 2020, “a first interpretative question is whether such inviolability extends to all his acts ‘whatever their nature’, or only to those decisions of his position, that is, endorsed by the corresponding authorities. An interpretation systematic and historical of this constitutional precept can only be restrictive, circumscribing the irresponsibility to the acts of their function, since this is required by equality before the law of article 14 of the Constitution, in congruence with the parliamentary nature of the new monarchy… .”
One can certainly say louder, but hardly clearer.
Has Dolores Delgado explained what the discrepancies between the prosecutors consisted of? No. Has she explained why regularizations carried out by Juan Carlos I after be notified by prosecutors “privileged” in a generic way on the investigations, that is, knowing that they should be more precise so that they could annul any allegedly spontaneous regularization, as required by law? Nope.
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In her de facto farewell speech, on June 29 before the Fiscal Council, Dolores Delgado took stock of 16 pages, refraining from mentioning the investigation proceedings on the emeritus, of which there is nothing to claim anymore that the cause was made to disappear with a biased regularization ad hoc and an absolute inviolability typical not of a 21st Century Prosecutor’s Office, such as the one proclaimed by Dolores Delgado that she has left behind after passing through the FGE, but of a Prosecutor’s Office that applied the archaic doctrine according to which the “sovereign” is the authority that creates the courts to protect himself and his subjects. Rex non potest peccare.