Connery faces new charges of tax fraud in Spain - 16.07.2010

As we go to print Spanish news sources are reporting that investigations by a judge in Marbella have resulted in a second case being established against the Scottish actor

Scottish actor, Sean Connery and his wife, Micheline, are facing charges of fiscal fraud worth 1.64 million € after the sale of some land by a company linked to the couple.

 

 

The judge in Instruction Court One in Marbella, Ricardo Puyol, says in his report, seen by the news agency EFE, that the investigations in the case, codenamed ‘Goldfinger’, where the actor and his wife are also implicated regarding the sale of their villa ‘Malibú’, have resulted in a new series of facts which are being seen as another fiscal crime.

 

 

Therefore the magistrate, given the documentation which has been seized, considers that a separate case should investigate the facts which could be liable to new penal charges. The judge notes that the decision notes that the new facts have no direct relation with the original case ‘but it is more than obvious that they are items which demand urgent attention by the judiciary’.

 

It’s urgent because the magistrate considers the fiscal fraud could expire under Spanish law on July 25, and now he wants to take statements from the actor and his wife using an international letter of request.

 

The original Malibú case saw the sale of the actor’s villa in 1999 and the subsequent constriction of 32 luxury flats on the plot, while the new case regards the ‘Colinas de Limonar’ development in Málaga City and the sale by the Montelagares S.A. company which is listed as the owner of two of the fincas where the tax fraud of 1.64 million € is suspected.

 

The judge has also called for an ‘immediate preventative freezing and embargo’ of a series of bank accounts, deposits, shares and other items, including any safes if they exist, for which he has called for any safes found to be opened.

 

The magistrate also considers a firm of lawyers could be implicated and could have committed crimes such as the misuse of public funds, bribery, crimes against Hacienda and money laundering.