- …concludes that the National Court is not competent to investigate the singer after the complaint of two of his former employees
BARCELONA (CONVERSEER) – The Public Prosecutor’s Office has rejected the complaint filed by two former employees against Julio Iglesias –through the international human rights organisation Women’s Link– for alleged crimes of human trafficking, sexual assault, harassment, mistreatment at work and breach of work duties.
The deputy prosecutor of the National Court, Marta Durántez, aligns herself with the arguments of the defence, carried out by José Antonio Choclán, who alleged that the Spanish courts are not competent and concludes that “it is not up to” Spain to investigate the events, which took place in the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. “There is no reason not to initiate the corresponding criminal proceedings [there],” she alleges.
In other words, they should have first reported it in the countries where the alleged crimes took place and if the case had been dismissed there and a “real impossibility or lack of will” to investigate had been established, they would have had the door open to going to Spain to try. The singer’s lawyer accused the two victims of filing the complaint in Spain to achieve a “greater media impact”.
“[Spain] only intervenes if the directly competent state cannot or does not want to investigate and thus is accredited”, recalls the prosecutor. And she maintains that the Spanish state cannot “establish itself as a universal judge without relevant territorial or personal connection elements”, which in this case “do not exist”. Moreover, the fact that Julio Iglesias is Spanish does not imply “automatic competence” to investigate him.
Likewise, the prosecutor insists that Julio Iglesias does not reside in Spain and does not have his “centre of life, interests or activity” there and that the two complainants do not have Spanish nationality, do not live in Spain and did not travel there with the singer. Therefore, the essential personal or territorial link is “completely missing” and none of the conditions that would open the door to starting an investigation are met.
After the complaint was made public, Julio Iglesias’ lawyer submitted a letter denying the facts and lamenting that the “aggressive media campaigns” were causing him “irreparable natural harm” and “bad reputation”. The letter, which ARA had access to, argued at length that the Spanish courts were not competent because the complaint had been filed in Spain “without previously trying” in the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas: “There is no way that the Spanish Public Prosecutor’s Office can attribute to itself the unilateral power to become a universal prosecutor, nor that the victim be granted a right to choose the jurisdiction that is most convenient for them”. It concluded that the complainants cannot “condition the scope of a state’s sovereignty” and cannot “deprive another state of its exercise”.
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All this came to light after an investigation by Eldiario.es and Univision Noticias revealed that in 2021, two women, who were domestic workers at Julio Iglesias’ mansions in the Caribbean, were pressured to have sexual relations with him, as well as slaps, touching, insults, physical and verbal harassment and an atmosphere of continuous control and harassment. It was also later learned that the singer demanded gynaecological and sexually transmitted infection tests from his domestic workers.
Julio Iglesias’ first reaction was to deny everything on Instagram, presenting himself as a victim of the “evil” of the complainants and assuring that he had not “abused, coerced or disrespected any woman”. “These accusations are absolutely false and cause me great sadness”, he added. Days later, he even published alleged private messages from the former employees. Now everything has come to nothing. The only way to start a future investigation would be to report it in the Dominican Republic or the Bahamas.
