Spanish king's sister cleared in tax fraud case

Madrid : A Spanish court on Friday acquitted King Felipe VI's sister, Princess Cristina, of charges that she helped her husband evade taxes, in a case that shamed the royal family.

Her husband, however, Inaki Urdangarin, was given a jail sentence of six years and three months for syphoning off millions of euros between 2004 and 2006 from a foundation he headed in the island of Majorca.

Urdangarin can file an appeal but may be taken into custody soon as the prosecutor is considering whether to request his imprisonment, a judicial source said.   

The 51-year-old princess was the first member of Spain's royal family to face criminal charges since the monarchy's restoration in 1975.

"We must acquit and we are acquitting Cristina Federica... of tax fraud, of which she was accused," the court said. 

She was ordered however to pay a fine of 265,000 euros ($282,000) for benefiting from her husband's wrongdoing. He was fined 512,000 euros.

The case, heard in Palma, sullied the reputation of the royal household and became a symbol of the elite's perceived corruption. 

The scandal broke in 2011 amid Spain's deepest economic crisis in decades.

Princess Cristina faced up to eight years in prison if convicted of fraud over her 49-year-old husband's work with the non-profit Noos Institute sports foundation.

Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball medallist was charged with the more serious crimes of embezzlement, influence peddling, forgery and money laundering.

The couple, who have been married since 1997 and have four children together, went on trial last year along with 15 others, including former government minister Jaume Matas.

After her 1997 fairytale marriage to Urdangarin, Princess Cristina was constantly in the celebrity spotlight and won praise for having a salaried job.

But eventually, people began to raise eyebrows at the couple's lavish lifestyle.

In 2004 they purchased a 1,200-square-metre (13,000-square-foot) house for six million euros ($6.3 million) in Barcelona, with centre-right daily El Mundo asking: "Where is the money coming from?"