Charlie Smith
GENERAL Franco’s granddaughter has been slapped with a €525,063 fine for failing to declare profits from the sale of shares in the family’s property business.
The Tax Agency claimed the Duchess of Franco, Carmen Martínez-Bordiú, 67, sold shares in FR Promociones del Suroeste S.A. on the same date in 2006 as receiving a donation from her mother Carmen Franco – who has since died.
According to the Spanish treasury, socialite Martínez-Bordiú received a donation of €9 million, but fraudulently claimed she had only received €6.7 million.
The former contestant on Spain’s Strictly Come Dancing hit back at the media and authorities, claiming ‘the statements made by the press are absolutely distorted and insidious.’
She said: “I would like to clarify that in my personal income tax return for 2006 and 2007, I declared all the capital gains obtained from the sale of shares and accepting bonuses.”
Martínez-Bordiú’s brother Francisco Franco, 64, runs the property business and is currently appealing against a 30-month prison sentence he received this year following a Guardia Civil chase where he rammed their car.
He also hit the headlines for defending his dictator grandfather, saying the exhumation of Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum near Madrid ‘would simply divide Spaniards even more.’
His sister’s bill from the treasury is a drop in the ocean of the Franco estate’s total value, thought to be worth over €500 million.
