King Juan Carlos’s former mistress has revealed she feared their relationship would destroy the monarchy and how she was warned she could end up ‘dead in a tunnel like Princess Diana.’
In a rare interview, Corinna Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein also told the BBC of her heartbreak at being dumped by Juan Carlos shortly after her father’s funeral and how she was hounded away from the monarch by Spanish courtiers.
In April 2012, the Danish-born businesswoman found herself splashed across newspapers throughout the world after the king shot dead a five tonne elephant on a £37,000 hunting trip to Botswana.
If the king hadn’t fallen in his tent one night – fracturing his hip in three places – the Spanish press may never have learned of the lavish jaunt during a savage economic crisis – or that he was openly unfaithful to his wife of 44 years, Queen Sofia.
Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, 56, said she believes the media circus was pre-planned by the royal establishment, who wanted to ‘speed up an abdication’ and have her out of the picture.
‘From the moment I came back from that trip I was under full-blown surveillance,’ Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein told the BBC. ‘This was the beginning of a campaign to paint me as this Wallis Simpson, Lady Macbeth, evil character who’d led this wonderful man astray on this trip during a big economic crisis.’
Spanish King Juan Carlos greets Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Barcelona on 22 May 2006. Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says their affair began in 2004 and ended in 2009
She alleges that the Centro Internacional de Inteligencia (CNI), Spanish intelligence, began harassing her.
First, she claims, her Monaco apartment was ransacked and then on a business trip to Brazil she was tailed.
An anonymous threat was made about there being ‘many tunnels between Monaco and Nice’ – a reference to Princess Diana’s fatal car crash.
Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein attends the Women4Walkabout Ladies Luncheon at Claridge’s, London in June, 2017
Furthermore, she claimed a book about the British royal’s death was left out in the living room of her Swiss apartment.
Later that year, Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein said she was visited by the CNI.
The operative, a dear friend of Juan Carlos, told her ‘he was sent by the king’ to warn her against talking to the media.
‘He said if I didn’t follow these instructions, he would not guarantee my physical safety or the physical safety of my children.’ She told the broadcaster.
The businesswoman, who grew up in Germany, said that the Botswana trip had been a tenth birthday present from the king to her son – Juan Carlos had become close to her children during their affair from 2004 to 2009.
‘I wasn’t keen on going on this trip,’ Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein told the BBC . ‘I felt that King Juan Carlos was trying to get me to come back to him, and I didn’t want to give a false impression. I almost had premonitions about this trip.’
It was on a hunt that the pair had, in fact, first met. In February 2004, Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein described how during the shoot Juan Carlos got into difficulty with his shotgun.
‘And I’m quite knowledgeable about all that, so I could explain what was wrong,’ she told the BBC. ‘I think he was quite surprised.’
Their relationship blossomed, Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein – who was at the time running a consultancy firm in London – would meet the king in a small cottage on his estate in Madrid.
She told the broadcaster that they ‘immediately clicked’ with many common interests and in the first year, Juan Carlos would call her up ten times a day.
She once asked how all this would sit with the queen and Juan Carlos explained that he and Sofia ‘had an arrangement to represent the crown, but they led totally different, separate lives.’
The king and Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein grew extremely close, she spent time with his friends and met his children.
Juan Carlos and Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein at Castle Schockingen in Stuttgart, Germany, in February 2006
The ex-king and his wife Sofia (pictured) have reportedly not shared a bedroom since she caught him with another woman on a 1976 hunting trip
Prince Charles, Prince of Wales greets Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein (centre) and Bob Colacello at a fund raising event he held for The Prince’s Drawing school at Buckingham Palace on June 19, 2014 in London
And in 2009, Juan Carlos even visited her father – telling him that ‘he was very much in love with me, and intended to marry me.’
Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein claims that the monarch had proposed to her earlier that year.
She told the BBC: ‘I was very much in love with him, but I foresaw – I’m a political strategist – that this would be very difficult. And I thought it might destabilise the monarchy.’
Her father had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and been given just months to live.
‘So I decided to spend time with him – we were very close,’ Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein said. ‘To my great shock, just after his funeral, the king told me he’d been carrying on a relationship with another woman for a period of three years.’
The pair remained close friends, however, and Juan Carlos even called her to his bedside in 2010 before undergoing surgery for a benign tumour on his lung which he was ‘terrified’ about.
When the king’s family arrived at the hospital, Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein recalls being unceremoniously told to leave by courtiers.
In 2014, Juan Carlos abdicated and his son Felipe took over the throne.
The king, however, continued to conduct business and was often in the Middle East.
It is through the monarch’s dealings there that Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein has once again found herself in the spotlight.
Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Richard E. Grant and Maria Cristina Buccellati attend The Old Vic Bicentenary Ball to celebrate the theatre’s 200th birthday at The Old Vic Theatre on May 13, 2018 in London
She is under investigation in relation to audio recordings of a meeting between herself and retired Spanish police commissioner at her London home in 2015.
During the meeting she alleged that the former king had received a secret commission for helping to secure a $7 billion Saudi rail deal.
The investigation into the conversation was initially closed in 2018, but it was reopened last month after new evidence emerged with police discovering other copies of the conversation, The Times reported.
Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein is being investigated over whether she commissioned Villarejo, then a serving officer, to obtain information about a Spanish citizen.
A lawyer for Ms Sayn-Wittgenstein said: ‘Corinna never hired or discussed hiring Villarejo and therefore never paid him for anything … Our client will robustly defend her rights against these baseless accusations.’
Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein attends the Fashion 4 Development’s 5th annual Official First Ladies luncheon at The Pierre Hotel on September 28, 2015 in New York
Meanwhile a Swiss inquiry is probing Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein for alleged money laundering over a €65 million payment Juan Carlos made to her in 2012.
Swiss prosecutor, Yves Bertossa, is looking at an alleged $100million donation to Juan Carlos – €65 million at the time – from the late Saudi king in 2008.
At the time, Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein told the BBC, she was ‘very surprised’ to receive the funds but flew to Madrid to thank the king, who she believes felt guilty about how her flat in Monaco had been ransacked and the visit by the head of the CNI.
‘I think he was very shocked to understand the extent of pressure I’d been put under, and the extent of the reputational destruction that had taken place.’ She said.
In testimony provided to the Swiss prosecutor, Ms Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein said that the colossal transfer was an act of love.
‘I think it was recognition of how much I meant to him, how much [her son] meant to him,’ she says. ‘It was a gratitude for looking after him during his absolutely worst moments.’
She is insistent that Juan Carlos was not laundering the money or trying to hide it when he gifted it to her.
Earlier this month Juan Carlos, 82, made the stunning announcement he was leaving Spain and after two weeks of rampant speculation, the palace confirmed that the emeritus king was in the UAE.
The former monarch is reportedly staying in the £10,000-a-night presidential suite of the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi with his ‘most faithful friend for the past 40 years’, 70-year-old Mallorcan interior designer Marta Gaya.
Who is Spain’s former king, Juan Carlos I?
Juan Carlos I reigned as king of Spain from November 1975 until his abdication in June 2014
Juan Carlos I reigned as king of Spain from November 1975 until his abdication in June 2014.
He was a popular monarch for most of his four-decade reign who played a critical role in the country’s transition to democracy.
He is the grandson of Alfonso XIII, the last king of Spain before the abolition of the monarchy in 1931 and the subsequent declaration of the Second Spanish Republic.
Juan Carlos was born in Rome, Italy, on January 5, 1938, during his family’s exile. He came to Spain in 1947 to continue his studies and entered the Zaragoza military academy.
He completed his tertiary education at the University of Madrid and went on to marry Princess Sofia of Greece and Denmark in Athens in 1962.
They went on to have two daughters and a son together: Elena, Cristina, and Felipe.
Juan Carlos first began periodically acting as Spain’s head of state in the summer of 1974. Fascist dictator Francisco Franco died in November the following year and Juan Carlos became king on 22 November 1975, two days after Franco’s death.
Juan Carlos was hailed for his role in Spain’s transition to democracy and reforms to dismantle the Francoist regime.
However the King and the monarchy’s reputation began to suffer after controversies surrounding his family arose.
In April 2012, Juan Carlos faced criticism for an elephant-hunting trip in Botswana during a time of financial crisis in Spain.
The public found out about the trip only after the King injured himself and a special aircraft was sent to bring him home.
Pictured left to right: Then-Princess Letizia , Prince Felipe, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos pose for a photo in 2009
Spanish officials stated that the expenses of the trip were not paid by taxpayers or by the palace, but by Syrian businessman Mohamed Eyad Kayali.
Corruption scandals circling the royal family closed in when his daughter, Princess Cristina, was accused of tax fraud in 2014 and became the first Spanish royal to stand trial. She was later acquitted, but her husband was sentenced.
He abdicated in favour of his son, Prince Felipe, in 2014, and last year, Juan Carlos announced his decision to withdraw from public life, ending his remaining institutional functions and appearances from June 2019. Last August, he successfully underwent heart surgery in Madrid.
In June 2020, Spain’s supreme court prosecutor opened an investigation into Juan Carlos’ involvement in a high-speed rail contract in Saudi Arabia that was granted to a group of Spanish companies in 2011.
King Felipe renounced his own inheritance and stripped his father of his palace allowance in March after reports the latter received $100 million from the late Saudi king and gave millions to a businesswoman.