Iñaki Urdangarin

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Iñaki Urdangarin
Iñaki Urdangarin

Iñaki Urdangarin (2008)

Player information
birthday 15th January 1968
place of birth Zumarraga , Guipúzcoa , Spain
citizenship SpaniardsSpaniards Spanish
height 1.97 m
Playing position Back right
Throwing hand Left
Club information
society Career ended
Clubs as active
from ... to society
1986-2000 SpainSpain FC Barcelona
National team
  Games (goals)
SpainSpain Spain 170 (371)

Status: national team January 1, 2007

Iñaki Urdangarin Liebaert (born January 15, 1968 in Zumarraga , Guipúzcoa ) is a former Spanish handball player . After his marriage to Infanta Cristina of Spain, he was Duke of Palma until he and his wife were King Felipe VI. In the course of a corruption, fraud and tax affair, the title was withdrawn in mid-June 2015. The correct salutation in Spain at that time was His Excellency .

On June 12, 2018, the judgment against Iñaki Urdangarin was upheld by the Spanish Supreme Court ( Tribunal Supremo ), slightly reduced. He received a prison sentence of 5 years and 10 months for embezzlement of six million euros in taxpayers' money, fraud, forgery of documents and money laundering.

childhood and education

Iñaki Urdangarin Liebaert is the sixth child of Juan Maria Urdangarin Berriochoa (1932–2012) and the Belgian Claire Liebaert Courtain (* 1935). He grew up in Barcelona and attended the Caspe - Sagrado Corazon de Jesus School there . Between the ages of 16 and 18 he lived in Vitoria-Gasteiz and attended the Santa Maria del Pilar school there . While still at school he played handball in the school team. At the age of 18 he switched to professional handball.

During his handball career he studied business administration and management at the University of Barcelona . He achieved a master's degree in business training and audit as a management consultant, a degree in business administration and management with an integrated master's degree in business administration at ESADE in Barcelona.

Handball career

Urdangarin was a professional handball player at FC Barcelona from 1986 to 2000 . He took part in the Summer Olympics three times with the Spanish national handball team. At the Olympic Games in 1996 and 2000 he won the bronze medal with his team. At the European handball championships in Croatia in 2000, he also won the bronze medal. In 2000 he retired from active sports.

In November 2001 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Real Orden del Mérito Deportivo , a royal medal for merits in sport.

Marriage and children

At the 1996 Olympic Games, he met the Infanta Cristina de Borbón, daughter of King Juan Carlos I , through the water polo goalkeeper Jesús Miguel Rollán . They were married on October 4, 1997 in Barcelona Cathedral . Urdangarin was awarded the title of Duke of Palma on the occasion of the wedding. The couple has four children who are eight to eleven of the Spanish line of succession:

  • Juan Valentín de Todos los Santos (born September 29, 1999 in Barcelona)
  • Pablo Nicolás (born December 6, 2000 in Barcelona)
  • Miguel (born April 30, 2002 in Barcelona)
  • Irene (born June 5, 2005 in Barcelona)

Duties and profession since 2000

Since his marriage, he has shown interest in social and cultural issues, especially when they were related to sports. He is the director of several social foundations in Spain, but also internationally. These include the Balia Foundation for Children, the Equipara Foundation , the Eisenhower Foundation , the Sport, Culture and Integration Foundation and the Barcelona FC Foundation .

Until 2009 he was a consultant to Motorpress Ibérica for Bertelsmann.

Corruption affair

Urdangarin acted from 2004 to 2006 as chairman of the supposedly non-profit "Foundation Nóos". When Urdangarin was first suspected of corruption in 2006, under pressure from his father-in-law, the king, he resigned the chairmanship of the foundation and switched to the Spanish telecommunications group Telefónica . In 2009 Urdangarin and the Infanta Cristina moved to the United States with their four children. Urdangarin has since worked as a consultant for Telefónica in Washington, DC

According to investigations by the special prosecutor for corruption offenses, there is suspicion that Urdangarin, as chairman of the “Stiftung Nóos” and his business partner Diego Torres, embezzled funds from the regional governments in the Balearic Islands and Valencia to the tune of four million euros. Urdangarin received the orders from the government of the Balearic Islands without a public tender. The "foundation" is said to have issued fictitious invoices for invented services for the organization of congresses on sports and tourism. Part of the income is said to have landed on private accounts of Urdangarin and Torres via a company network. Although the court did not provide details of the indictment, the investigating judge José Castro Aragón summoned Urdangarin as the defendant for questioning on February 6, 2012; this was an unprecedented event in Spain as never before has a member of the royal family been charged.

In addition to Urdangarin, eight other people were charged in the so-called "Nóos Affair", including Diego Torres and his wife, as well as former members of the Balearic Islands regional government such as the former island president Jaume Matas . You belong to the conservative People's Party (PP) . Infanta Cristina was not among the defendants, although she was a member of the foundation's board of directors and her personal secretary, Carlos García Revenga, was treasurer and she is also a partner in several companies into whose accounts Urdangarin is said to have smuggled funds. They are also accused of tax fraud.

The king remained silent about the corruption allegations for a long time; on December 12, 2011, he excluded his son-in-law and daughter Cristina from the official activities of the royal family. He also announced that he would break a taboo and be financially accountable to the people and government in the future. For the first time it was revealed on the royal homepage how Juan Carlos and all other family members used the state-approved, freely usable Apanage . At the same time, he stressed that Urdangarin had never drawn funds from the royal budget.

On January 25, 2013, King Juan Carlos of Spain ordered Urdangarin to be removed from the royal website. A few days later, an investigative judge in Palma de Mallorca ordered Urdangarin and Torres to deposit a total of 8.1 million euros in bail. The money is intended to cover civil liability in the event of a conviction. Since Urdangarin did not comply, the confiscation of his property was initiated.

On February 8th, the city administration of Palma renamed one of the most important streets of Palma de Mallorca, the Rambla dels Ducs de Palma de Mallorca (Avenue of the Dukes of Palma) to the old name La Rambla (The Avenue) - Urdangarin was awarded the title of Duke of Palma after his marriage to the king's daughter . Previously, an email from Urdangarin to an employee of the royal palace had been published which was very offensive; Urdangarin signed therein with a lewd corruption of his ducal title.

In February 2013, Diego Torres leaked emails to the press suggesting that the royal family had been concerned about Urdangarin's dubious business much earlier than previously claimed. According to a report in the New York Times , pressure had already been put on Urdangarin in the summer of 2004 to leave his post as one of the heads of the Instituto Nóos. They also show that Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein - the king's friend, who accompanied Juan Carlos on the heavily criticized elephant hunt in Africa in 2011 - was in contact with the company and helped Urdangarin to find other lucrative part-time jobs in foundations and sports associations was.

At the beginning of November 2013 it became known that the Spanish judiciary had seized 16 Urdangarin properties with a total value of 6.1 million euros in the course of the corruption investigation.

In January 2016, the trial of Urdangarin and seventeen other suspects began in Palma, including his wife Cristina. On February 17, 2017, he was sentenced in the first instance to a prison term of six years and three months and a fine of around half a million euros. Both sides lay vocation one. On June 12, 2018, his sentence was upheld by the Madrid Supreme Court.

Career as a handball player

FC Barcelona

  • International titles :
  • National titles :

Spanish national handball team

Urdangarin completed 170 international matches and took part in nine major events:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Spanish king recognizes sister's title of nobility. Article in the Nordwest-Zeitung of June 12, 2015. Accessed June 12, 2015.
  2. ↑ "King Felipe's brother-in-law must go to prison". Retrieved on the same day in N-TV on June 12, 2018.
  3. ↑ Iñaki Urdangarín, víctima del recorte de gastos de Berstelmann http://www.eleconomista.es/ , accessed on December 30, 2011
  4. ↑ Iñaki Urdangarín charged with fraud , süddeutsche.de, accessed December 30, 2011
  5. ↑ Los Duques de Palma se trasladan a Washington al aceptar Iñaki Urdangarín una oferta de Telefónica
  6. ↑ Cristina e Iñaki, paseo por Washington ( Memento of the original from October 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.czn.es
  7. ^ Scandal in the Spanish nobility , Süddeutsche Zeitung online from November 9, 2011, accessed on November 10, 2011
  8. ↑ Leo Wieland: The Duke regrets the damage to his image. , faz.net December 12, 2011 , accessed December 12, 2011
  9. ↑ El Rey saca a Urdangarin de su página web EL PAIS from January 25, 2013 (in Spanish)
  10. ↑ Financial scandal: Juan Carlos' son-in-law has to deposit millions in bail Spiegel online, January 30, 2013, accessed on January 31, 2013
  11. ↑ Rambla pierde hoy añadido ducs Diario de Mallorca, accessed on February 8, 2013
  12. ↑ [1] El duque em ... Palma ... do
  13. ^ Investigation of Spanish Duke Draws Royals Into Scandal
  14. ↑ Tagesschau.de: Urdangarín's real estate confiscated ( memento from November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 5, 2013
  15. ↑ The monarchy in court. Luxemburger Wort , January 11, 2016, accessed February 17, 2017
  16. ↑ Six years imprisonment for Infanta Cristina's husband. FAZ, February 17, 2017, accessed on the same day.
  17. ↑ The brother-in-law of Spain's king is threatened with a clear extension of his sentence. Der Standard , July 3, 2017, accessed the same day.
  18. ^ "Prison sentence confirmed for the king's brother-in-law" , Spiegel Online , June 12, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Urdangarin, Iñaki
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Urdangarin Liebaert, Iñaki
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish handball player, Duke of Palma de Mallorca
DATE OF BIRTH 15th January 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Zumarraga , Guipúzcoa, Spain