The dark tycoon living in London who paid the Bribón de Juan Carlos I

A Venezuelan magnate involved in various financial scandals in the 1990s, José Álvarez Stelling, paid for the construction of the last Bribón, the ship in which Juan Carlos I is currently sailing, after his third return to Spain since his departure to Abu Dhabi in 2020. Stelling attended the presentation of the sailboat at the Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo in 2017, but his second surname was intentionally omitted to dilute his controversial history.

The friendship of Juan Carlos I with Stelling, a civil engineer and master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), dates back to the eighties, when the industrialist increased his assets exponentially until he accumulated one of the largest fortunes in Latin America. In the shadow of his main supporter, the all-powerful Venezuelan president Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974-1979 and 1989-1993), Stelling managed to get the figurehead of his empire, Banco Consolidado, to gather assets worth 1.9 billion euros of The time.

Carlos Andrés Pérez's friendship with Felipe González facilitated Stelling's jump to Europe. In 1987, the financier bought 55% of Banco Castro Canosa, a small Galician entity that was in trouble. And that same year, he submitted an offer of 2,000 million pesetas (12 million euros) to keep the Williams & Humbert wineries in Jerez, owners of the Dry Sack brand and which until then had formed part of the Rumasa conglomerate, expropriated by the government. Gonzalez government.

Companies from the food and beverage sector bid for Williams & Humbert but, against all odds, the Socialist Executive ended up opting for the proposal from Banco Consolidado, which until then had not expressed any interest in the Rumasa company, as account book king corp. The untold empire of Juan Carlos I, from Libros del KO. Stelling landed in Spain in style. He even opened his own bank, Astinvest, focused on large portfolios.

Those operations aroused the interest of King Juan Carlos, who approached Stelling to explore possible ways of collaboration.. From that contact arose a relationship that continues to this day and was not even in danger when bankruptcies and corruption cases began to haunt the Venezuelan banker.. In 1988, the Bank of Spain had to intervene in Banco Castro Canosa. At that time, Stelling already owned 90% of its shares..

But the darkest episode of the tycoon occurred in Venezuela, with the outbreak of the 1994 banking crisis, which forced the country's government to state the holding company of Banco Consolidado to try to guarantee customer deposits.. By then, Carlos Andrés Pérez had already been dismissed and imprisoned. Local authorities discovered a multimillion-dollar asset hole in the accounts of Stelling's banking group, who fled the country amid accusations of appropriation of funds and was tried for that episode, although he was never convicted..

Spain opened its arms. King Juan Carlos granted him the Commendation of Isabel la Católica for financing educational and cultural activities, although Stelling ended up taking up residence in London and refocused his career on real estate.. The monarch has stayed on numerous occasions at his home, a huge building located at 11 Farrier Walk, a picturesque cobbled street with restricted access in the exclusive neighborhood of Chelsea.

The sources consulted by El Confidencial assure that the King stayed in this property in January 2016, after spending that Christmas in Los Angeles and French Polynesia. And he also slept in one of the rooms of Stelling's house last April, when he flew from Abu Dhabi to the British capital to see the Champions League match between Chelsea and Real Madrid at the Stamford Bridge stadium, just 10 minutes walk from the home of the Venezuelan engineer.

After the abdication, Stelling emerged as one of the main benefactors in the shadow of Juan Carlos I, although his figure is one of the few who have managed to remain safe from the spotlight, even after investigations into the monarch's hidden fortune in Switzerland.. In 2016, the banker became the shipowner of the Bribón to replace another intimate of the King, José Cusí, who had exercised that function for four decades through the company Navilot SL.

At that time, the monarch wanted a new boat, one that would allow him to continue participating in regattas, despite his delicate state of health and his increasingly limited mobility.. Juan Carlos I opted for the 6mR class, a small sailboat of just 10.7 meters in length in which the skipper is safe and well protected from inclement weather.

Stelling commissioned the sixteenth example of the Bribón saga to the designers Juan Kouyoumdjian and Javier Cela, and the Garridos Shipyard in O Grove executed the concept. Subsequently, the initial design was modified by Astilleros Rodman de Vigo to move the position of the mast and try to make the ship gain sail area and be more competitive..

In May 2017, a year before Juan Carlos I's problems with the Geneva Canton Prosecutor's Office began, the former head of state traveled to Sanxenxo to attend the launch of the new Bribón. Next to the King, several friends and crew members posed, but also a man in his 80s, about 1.70 meters tall, in a white shirt, gray jacket and dark pants who went unnoticed, although he never left the monarch.

He identified himself only as “José Álvarez” and the organizers of the event assured that he was a businessman of Latin American origin who lived in London, without giving further details.. The tycoon was accompanied by one of his daughters, Violeta Mariana, also a fan of sailing.

Stelling read a short text on the same dock in the port. “It is an enormous satisfaction for me to be able to launch this boat here today, born in O Grove, which will begin its voyage in a town as fishing as Sanxenxo and verify the great work that the entire design and construction team has done during all these months “. “In addition, it is a great honor that King Juan Carlos has accepted to skipper this boat that will represent Spain in the world championship in Canada,” the Venezuelan banker concluded..

The act hardly had an impact, like other movements of the monarch. In September 2017, Juan Carlos I won that world championship with his new Bribón. As El Confidencial revealed in 2020, the monarch and 18 crew members of the ship flew from Santiago de Compostela to Vancouver in a private Boeing. They left on September 11, 2017 and returned to Madrid 10 days later on another charter flight, already with the champions trophy on board.

The bill for those two trips amounted to 440,000 euros, which were paid with funds from the Zagatka Foundation, the opaque entity with accounts at Credit Suisse of the cousin of Juan Carlos I, Álvaro de Orleans-Borbón.. In fact, those two flights to compete with El Bribón were included in the regularization of four million euros that the former head of state had to present in February 2021 to avoid a conviction for tax crimes in Spain for not having declared up to 8 million euros. euros on flights as a donation.

The ship paid for by Stelling is now the excuse that allows Juan Carlos I to return periodically to Spain, although until now no one has questioned the origin of the funds used to build and maintain it.. Not even the Tax Agency has done it.

*King Corp. The Untold Empire of Juan Carlos I, by José María Olmo and David Fernández, is a work by Libros del KO. can be purchased here.

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