The lawsuit brought by King Juan Carlos’s former mistress was thrown out of court

Spain’s King Juan Carlos abdicated the Spanish throne in 2014, and then in 2020, he went into self-imposed exile following a series of reports of just how thoroughly he profiteered from his position as king. Juan Carlos’s financial shenanigans were honestly hard to follow and I suspect they were even harder to unravel. These days, he spends most of his time in the Middle East or possibly Switzerland, but he has come back to Spain a few times to visit his family. He and his wife, the former Queen Sofia, remain mostly estranged but not divorced. Sofia remains in Spain, but is mostly retired from public life. But what of Juan Carlos’s mistress? For years, his mistress was Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, only they fell apart and she sued him, claiming that he was threatening her, harassing her and he basically sent his goons after her. Well, her lawsuit was just thrown out. It looks like it was mostly a jurisdictional issue.

A £126m lawsuit brought against the former king of Spain by his ex-lover cannot go to trial in England, a judge has ruled. Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, a Danish businesswoman with homes in England, was attempting to sue Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014, in the high court of England and Wales. On Friday, the judge, Mrs Justice Rowena Collins Rice, said the case was outside the court’s jurisdiction.

Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn claims she suffered intrusive, intimidatory and adverse episodes since their relationship came to public attention in 2012 in the aftermath of an elephant-hunting trip to Botswana.

She alleged that this included ordering the then head of Spain’s national intelligence agency to harass and threaten her. Documents submitted to an earlier hearing alleged that a book about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was left in her home as a warning. Juan Carlos denied the claims made against him and had sought to have them struck out.

In her written judgment Collins Rice said her principal reason for not allowing the claim to proceed was “because it has not been brought against the defendant in his country of domicile, as is his default entitlement; and the claimant has not satisfied me she has a good arguable case that her claim falls within an exception to that default rule. That, in turn, is because she has not sufficiently established that the ‘harmful event’ of which she complains – harassment by the defendant – happened in England.”

The judge said even if she had concluded that the high court did have jurisdiction, she would have granted Juan Carlos’s application to strike out Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn’s claim because it did not apply with the rules for the drafting of a harassment claim. Other parts of the claim relating to alleged conduct before his abdication had previously been struck out on the grounds they were subject to state immunity.

Collins Rice said: “The claimant has an account she wishes to give of her personal and financial history with the defendant, and about the harm he has caused her peace of mind and personal wellbeing, and her business, social and family life. I take no view about that account as such.”

Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn claims Juan Carlos’s alleged behaviour was connected to a payment of €65m (£56m) she says he made to her soon after the Botswana trip and told her it was an unconditional gift before changing his mind. She said she was “deeply disappointed” by the high court’s decision, adding: “Juan Carlos has deployed his full armoury to grind me down and the reach of his power is immense. I am considering all options.”

[From The Guardian]

Lord, this whole thing is so tawdry. I get why the English court didn’t want to touch it, because it’s seriously not clear that anything happened in the UK? It would be one thing if she was suing him in Spanish court or even Swiss court. While I’m pretty sure that Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn is some kind of mercenary mistress/hustler, I’m also sure that the former king treated her like garbage and she probably was threatened and harassed. So, IDK. Let’s see how far this goes.

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