SEAN Connery’s wife has been ordered to stand trial over an alleged
multi-million pound tax fraud.
State prosecutors want French-born Micheline Roquebrune jailed for two and a
half years and fined more than £16million if found guilty.
A judge in Marbella made his trial decision after a long-running investigation
into the 1999 sale of the home Sir Sean, 85, and his artist wife owned in
the Costa del Sol resort.
Investigating magistrate Alfredo Mondeja decided to shelve his probe into the
retired Scots actor after receiving a 56-page affidavit from him denying any
wrongdoing.
He said at the same time he was continuing his investigation against Sir
Sean’s wife – who has now been charged – over alleged irregularities in the
sale of the couple’s former home called Casa Malibu.
A rogatory letter will now be sent to the Bahamas where the couple live
informing Micheline of the court decision and ordering her to appoint a
defence lawyer.
A date for the trial, which will take place at a criminal court in Malaga, has
yet to be set.
State prosecutors formally accused Sir Sean’s wife of being accomplice to an
alleged tax fraud in an indictment earlier this year.
They say she aided and abetted a complex operation to defraud the Spanish
Treasury of nearly £5.5million in 2006 through a Spanish company called By
The Sea.
The fine they are seeking for her is three times the amount they allege was
defrauded.
Prison sentences for first-time offenders are normally only suspended if they
are two years or less, raising the real prospect Sir Sean’s wife will do
time if she is convicted and sentenced in line with the state prosecution
demand.
Prosecutors allege Micheline collaborated with other lawyers and businessmen
charged in the Goldfinger case to formalize “fictitious legal transactions”
so profits obtained during the sale of Casa Malibu could be hidden from the
taxman.
It was sold in 1999 and subsequently demolished.
More than 70 flats, later sold for an estimated £45 million, were built in its
place despite planning regulations stipulating only five flats could be
built there.
The long-running judicial probe into the deal will reach open court in January
when 16 defendants including a former corrupt mayor of Marbella and two
lawyers, go on trial.
Prosecutors want the alleged wrongdoers sentenced to a total of 156 years in
prison if they are found guilty of crimes including tax fraud and receiving
bribes
Former Marbella mayor Julian Munoz and ex-town planning chief Juan Antonio
Roca, two of those set to stand trial, are already serving prison sentences
for separate corruption convictions.
Micheline Roquebrune’s trial will take place separately because the last part
of the probe into her alleged wrongdoing has been conducted as a separate
investigation.
She had previously brushed off allegations of money laundering, when they
first surfaced at the start of the Goldfinger judicial probe by saying: “These
allegations of money-laundering are nonsense.
“We have nothing to do with this. We sold the property and that is it.”