Spain's Princess Cristina has lost a legal battle to avoid being tried for tax fraud and is expected to testify next month in a corruption trial also featuring her husband and 16 other defendants, a panel of judges ruled on Friday.
Lawyers for the sister of King Felipe VI, a prosecutor and a state attorney representing Spanish tax authorities earlier this month all said the charges against Cristina should be thrown out because government officials agreed she had committed no crimes and should face at most an administrative fine for tax evasion.
But the judges disagreed. That means the 50-year-old Cristina will face two counts of tax fraud carrying a maximum prison sentence of eight years for allegedly failing to declare taxes on personal expenses paid by a real estate company she owned with her husband, Inaki Urdangarin, an Olympic handball medallist turned businessman.
The judges ended up siding with an investigative judge who spent four years probing the case and ruled she could be tried because of evidence presented by private anti-corruption group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands).
During the trial, the judges will have to weigh whether the couple criminally abused the Aizoon real estate consulting firm described in court documents as a "front company" to fund luxury vacations, throw parties at their modernist Barcelona mansion and pay for salsa dancing classes.
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The trial is the first time that a member of Spain's royal family has faced criminal charges since the monarchy was restored in 1975.
Urdangarin and others face charges of embezzling up to 6.2 million euros ($6.8 million) from contracts that were allegedly inflated or never honoured.
The princess' husband, formerly the Duke of Palma, is accused of using his title to land the deals for the Noos Institute he ran with business partner Diego Torres.
Cristina denied knowledge of her husband's activities during a 2014 closed-door court appearance, but the investigative judge decided she could be tried for tax fraud allegedly committed in 2007-8.
Details about the couple's regal lifestyle outraged Spaniards as the country teetered on the edge of an economic crisis and the unemployment rate hit 27 per cent.
