SPANISH PRINCESS SUMMONED TO APPEAR IN PALMA COURT

But, the Anticorruption Prosecutor has five days to lodge an appeal and intends to do so on the grounds of a lack of evidence.
Iñaki Urdangarin is under investigation for allegedly embezzling millions of euros in public money, some of it from the Balearic government when Jaume Matas was President.

The 47-year-old has not been named as a suspect in the corruption probe opened at the end of 2011 here in Majorca by Judge Jose Castro, but Urdangarin and his former partner Diego Torres are suspected of syphoning off money paid by regional governments to stage sports and tourism events to the nonprofit Noos Institute, which Urdangarin chaired from 2004 to 2006. Both men have denied any wrongdoing and have not been charged with any crime.

Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball player, sought to distance his wife and the rest of the royal family from his business dealings when he was questioned in a Palma court for the second time in February by the judge leading the investigation.

Emails
But over the past few months, Torres has provided Judge Castro with emails that were leaked to the press which appear to show that Urdangarin regularly consulted his wife - a member of the board of the Noos Institute - about the body's affairs. Carlos Garcia Revenga, the longtime personal secretary to Princes Cristina and her older sister Princess Elena, was also questioned by the judge in February after Torres submitted another batch of emails that suggested he was actively involved in the Noos Institute's dealings.

Princess Cristina, who works as the director of social welfare programmes at Barcelona-based financial services group La Caixa's charitable foundation, has kept a low profile since the scandal broke.

In 2009 Princess Cristina and her husband, along with their four children, moved from Barcelona to Washington where Urdangarin took up a job as an executive director of the US subsidiary of Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica.

The couple were given the title of Duke and Duchess of Palma when they wed, but Palma City Council has since asked that he longer uses his title. They were living in the United States when the allegations of corruption at the Noos Institute first broke in Spain. A street named in their honour has also been renamed.

Mansion
In August 2012 the couple and their four children returned to Barcelona, where they own a mansion in the exclusive Pedralbes area that reportedly cost around six million euros and part of which has been embargoed as the Duke and Torres struggle to meet the 8.2 million euros civil bail set by Judge Castro.