The Power To Corrupt

If the Duke of Palma's appearances in court were to have a British parallel, it would be like Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence being up before the beak for allegedly fiddling a few invoices, though to be more sportingly accurate, it would be preferable were Captain Mark Phillips in the dock. An Olympic gold medallist, he does share a sporting background with the Duke who, as simple Iñaki Urdangarin, was an Olympic handball medallist.

What do former Olympic medallists with royal connections do once they are no longer participants in their sports? They stay with sport. Captain Mark has gone on to be a successful horsey person. Iñaki has gone on to be a sort of Mr. Fixer for sport of all sorts. Perhaps he should have stuck with handball, the sport he knew.

How has the Duke come to be in a Palma court? Partly, it is because, like many sportspeople, his life remained sport after he had ceased to be a player. The impulse is strong. It is one that makes managers, coaches, pundits and administrators of former players. It, the sport, is all they know. But normally, they stick with the one sport they knew. The Duke became positively Olympian in terms of his sporting interests.

It may have been the Duke's misfortune, or fortune if you prefer, to have sought to carve out a sports marketing career at the same time as Jaume Matas was president of the Balearics. Matas has been exposed as a vain man, one who coveted the company of celebrity (and royalty) and who puffed himself up with grandiose projects or ideas for projects of a sporting nature. The "caso Palma Arena" takes its name from the velodrome. It was just one of Matas' pet schemes. Another was the preposterous idea of staging a grand prix on the streets of Palma.

Making sense of the trail that has led to what has not been a trial but a declaration in front of the judge reveals a whole world of sport that the Duke inhabited. The case against him first surfaced when the judge investigating the "caso Palma Arena" was inclined to consider arrangements between the Fundación Illesport (and IBATUR, the now defunct-because-of-corruption tourism agency) and the Duke's Instituto Nóos that related to international sports forums in Mallorca at the time of Matas' second presidency.

This was not the first time the Duke's institute had dabbled in grand sports gatherings. There had been the Valencia Summit in 2004, an annual sporting debate. There had been the European Games that weren't, also in Valencia, for which initially Nóos was to receive three million euros from the Valencia administration (it came to less than half this). Then there was the Palma Arena itself and an alleged 2.3 million euros from the Matas government to Nóos. And there was advice in respect of Villarreal football club; a ten-page report cost nearly 700,000 euros.

To itemise all the bits of evidence, if only in outline, would take much more than a ten-page report. How much paperwork the prosecutors and the judge have to consider is anyone's guess, as it requires untangling the network of companies with which the Duke was said to have had an association and the movement of funds to the UK, the USA and Belize. The Duke, in his declaration, has intimated that he knew little or nothing of these companies. They were under the management of his former business partner Diego Torres.

Through this network, so it is claimed, contracts from local authorities - the Balearics, Valencia, Alcalá de Henares, Mataró - were turned into subcontracts to companies operated by the Duke and for which unrealistic charges were made and payments sent offshore into tax havens.

The Duke has, however, further intimated that he only got involved with sports matters. Sport is all he knows, one might conclude. Olympic medallist he was, but he also acquired a diploma in business science from the University of Barcelona, is licensed in business management and had gained an MBA from ESADE, one of Spain's leading business schools.

The Duke will discover whether or not he is to face charges. This is why he has been in court; to establish whether there are grounds for formal charges.

Whether charges are laid or not, the Duke's story shows that sport, meant to have the power for good, can just as easily have the power to corrupt. His sporting background was the Olympics, his sporting interests were Olympian in scope, and the Olympics movement itself was once the embodiment of how sport can corrupt.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.