Iñaki Urdangarin arriving at court this morning.

Iñaki Urdangarin arriving at court this morning. | Ballesteros

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterPalma23/02/2017 00:00
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Iñaki Urdangarin is on conditional release, the court in Palma today having decided that he need not go immediately to prison. He will be obliged to present himself on the first of each month to the judicial authority in Switzerland, which is where he lives, and to inform the court of any movement outside the European Union or of any change of address.

He has therefore not been obliged to hand in his passport, but under conditional release terms for Diego Torres, Urdangarin's former business partner, Torres has had to and so is not allowed to leave Spain. Torres will also need to present himself to the nearest court to his home on the first of each month.

The court did not require them to pay bail - Urdangarin told the court he didn't have the means to do so in any event - and observed that at no time have they attempted to evade the justice system.

The prosecutor Pedro Horrach had sought bail payments of 200,000 euros for Urdangarin and 100,000 euros for Torres, demands that the judge, Samantha Torres, dismissed. In the case of Urdangarin, he had already lodged almost 1.2 million euros as a civil liability bond, of which over 225,000 euros could be returned to him; his sentence ordered a payment of just 970,000 euros. This amount is still being held until the appeal process has been concluded.

The hearing started at 10.30 and lasted just over half an hour. It then took two hours for the court to arrive at its decision. Urdangarin arrived a quarter of an hour before, carrying a backpack. He was greeted with jeers and cries of "thief", "return the money". His wife, Princess Cristina, did not accompany him.