the times | Tuesday July 21 2020 2GM 33
Willem de Kooning was one of many
who donated artworks to the hospitalThe World at Five
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In depth and online today at 5pm
thetimes.co.ukThe former King of Spain is facing the
growing prospect of a trial for money
laundering after allegations that a
secret Swiss bank account was used to
pay for his holiday in Tahiti.
Juan Carlos flew to the South Pacific
island for a nine-day stay in January- In October 2015, £26,311 was
transferred from a Swiss account to pay
for the trip, it is alleged by El Confiden-
cial, an online newspaper.
The money, paid in sterling to a
London travel agent through a third
party, is said to have come from the
Zagatka foundation, formed in Liech-
tenstein in 2003 by his cousin, Álvaro
de Orleans y Borbón, and is under in-
vestigation by a Swiss prosecutor. The
cousin paid for several flights for Juan
Carlos but denied that the former king
had access to the foundation’s money.
Swiss prosecutors are investigating
multimillion-euro payments into off-
shore accounts linked to Juan Carlos,
82, and the source of a €65 million
payment to Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgen-
stein, his former mistress. The king ab-
dicated in 2014 after a series of scandals.
In Spain public prosecutors are see-
ing if there is enough evidence to start
proceedings for money laundering and
tax crimes against him over his alleged
ties to suspected kickbacks for a con-
tract to build a railway in Saudi Arabia
in 2011. It is a matter of debate, but it is
thought investigators can only focus on
the former king’s activities from 2014.
If the money for his holiday is linked
to illegal funds, he may be tried for
money laundering, legal experts say. “If
the continuity of a crime is proved to
have taken place after 2014, the case
could be judged by the supreme court,”
José Luis Martí, a law professor at Pom-
peu Fabra university, said.
The allegations over Juan Carlos’s
dealings have rocked the monarchy. In
March they reached his son, King Feli-
pe, who disinherited himself from his
father and stripped him of his stipend.
Further allegations claiming that Ju-
an Carlos ferried suitcases of cash from
Switzerland have intensified calls for
reform. This month Pedro Sánchez, the
prime minister, described the allega-
tions as disturbing.
A dispute between Juan Carlos and
Ms Sayn-Wittgenstein, with whom he
had an affair in 2004-09, over how to
deal with the crisis has led to leaks to
the media revealing details of accounts
and payments. Ms Sayn-Wittgenstein’s
lawyers said their client’s position was
that the former king knew the €65 mil-
lion it was documented as a gift and had
always maintained that it was, and
therefore there were no grounds for
him to ask for it back.
Lawyers for Juan Carlos declined to
comment.Corinna zu Sayn-
Wittgenstein was
Juan Carlos’s loverart by modern masters found in hospital store
ITALIAN COASTGUARDThe whale in the latest rescue
drama, which was found close to the
island of Salina, was named Fury
because she shook herself so
violently to escape the net. Before
she dived, experts used microphones
to listen to her acoustic signal to
check for signs of stress. There are
fears that she will succumb to
exhaustion as she tries to swim with
restricted movement. “The other
whale, Spike, understood what we
were doing and co-operated, while
Fury didn’t co-operate, but we will
carry on searching for her until we
can set her free,” Ms Blasi added.dolphins and whales. This year the
coastguard has recovered 60 miles
of illegal nets in the area. “It’s likely
fishermen saw they had trapped the
whale, cut off that piece of net and
left it to its fate,” Ms Blasi said.
This month another sperm whale
— there are thought to be about
1,800 in the Mediterranean — was
freed from netting in the area, close
to the Aeolian islands.
“It’s getting worse because
whales have been using these
waters as a migration route more
often since shipping decreased due
to Italy’s lockdown,” Ms Blasi said.rescue operation. We thought she
would tire after 24 hours but she
didn’t help our work.”
Banned by the EU since 1999,
drift nets are towed by fishing boats
to snare swordfish, but can also trapfemale whale free as the net sliced
into her skin. However, she grew
increasingly agitated, thrashing
around before heading into deeper
water on Sunday with the net still
wrapped around her tail.
“It was getting dangerous for us
so we attached a light to [the whale]
and will continue to track her —
these damn nets are causing huge
damage,” Monica Blasi, a local
marine biologist working with the
coastguard, said.
Carmelo Isgrò, a biologist and
diver, added: “The whale appeared
to be crazy which didn’t help the
The sperm whale swam
off with net still around
its tail after divers spent
two days trying to free itSicilySardiniaPalermoSalinaTyrrhenian
Sea100 milesITALYLipariJuan Carlos
may be tried
for money
laundering
Hospital, fearing that they were about
to be overwhelmed, went looking for
somewhere to store ventilators and ad-
ditional beds and found a storeroom
full of artworks, worth up to $1 million.
“I was shaking when I saw it,” Vincent
Manzo, an art and antiques consultant,
told the New York Post. He said that he
was summoned to the hospital to exam-
ine the find but was initially reluctant
because of the pandemic. When he
ventured in, wearing a mask, “it was like
opening up King Tut’s tomb”.
A hospital spokeswoman disputed
the idea that they were unaware of the
collection. “We knew the artwork was
stored in the hospital,” said Barbara Jo
Howard. A Boston auction house has
said that it is compiling a catalogue of
the works for a sale but Ms Howard said
that it had not been appointed by the
hospital, nor had the hospital’s founda-
tion agreed to a sale.
Many of the pieces appear to have
been donated to the hospital between
the 1950s and 1980s, at a time when the
eastern end of the Hamptons con-
tained many artists. Bob Colacello, co-
author of Studios by the Sea: Artists of
the East End of Long Island, said that the
impressionist William Merritt Chase
set up an artist’s colony where “rich
ladies would come out in August and go
down to the beach. He would teach
them plain air painting.”
Later Jackson Pollock had a studiothere. Mr Colacello visited it, finding
the floor thick with paint. De Kooning
built a studio there too, “shaped like a
ship, because he was from the Nether-
lands and came from a seafaring
family”, he said. It had been kept “the
way it was the day he died in the 1970s,
with a paintbrush dipped in red”.
The artist, a heavy drinker, was a reg-
ular patient at the hospital and donated
paintings. “The Southampton Hospital
always had a big benefit every summer,”
Mr Colacello said. “For a long time it
was almost the only benefit, before
everything got more Manhattanised.
Artists would give their work. It wasn’t
totally surprising that this hospital
would be holding some of the work.”Spain
Isambard Wilkinson Madrid