Urdangarin’s ex-business partner tried to show the infanta received preferential treatment in Nóos case

Diego Torres, Iñaki Urdangarin’s former business partner, spent more than a year trying to prove that Princess Cristina was fully aware of the activities of the not-for-profit Nóos Institute. The infanta was on Tuesday targeted by the judge investigating the case, José Castro.

In order to do so, in April 2012 he began bit by bit to pass on to Judge Castro hundreds of emails he had downloaded from the computers of the institute which he ran with the Duke of Palma to show that the Royal Household, and Princess Cristina in particular, knew what was really going on inside the supposedly non-profit organization.

In doing so Torres and his lawyer, Manuel González Peeters, sought to show that the role played by the infanta in the affairs of Nóos was at least on a par with that of Torres’ wife, Ana María Tejeiro, who was named as a suspect in the case at the same time as her husband and Urdangarin.

In one of the emails sent in February 2003, Urdangarin explains to his wife the first steps that were taken in setting up the Nóos Institute. “I see you’re online, so I’ll take the opportunity to send you a message about Nóos that I’m thinking of sending. There are two versions. Clients, colleagues and friends. Read it and tell me what you think please…Ciao,” the email reads.

The princess could not be “so child-like as not to know where the manna” came from

But despite having supplied the emails in an effort to demonstrate Princess Cristina’s involvement in the affairs of the institute, Torres’s lawyer petitioned Judge Castro not to name the infanta in the case, arguing that the facts being investigated “do not even amount to an administrative infraction.” Torres has insisted all along that the activities of Nóos were legal.

The deposition sent by Torres’ lawyer goes on to argue that the role of Tejeiro in the Nóos Institute was of less significance than that of Princess Cristina, who was a member of its board of directors. He insisted that the infanta’s involvement in the business dealings of Urdangarin, with whom she jointly owned the real estate company Aizoon, was evident in “countless emails.” The princess could not be “so child-like as not to know where the manna” came from, Torres’ lawyer argued.

The document concludes that the difference in the treatment shown to Torres’ wife and the infanta was due to the princess’s status as a member of the royal family, and, as such, she was “afforded favorable treatment.”