Arantxa Sánchez Vicario is now breathing easy. She is still obliged to pay money that she says she does not have –6.6 million euros, jointly with her ex – but it is now certain that she will not go to prison. Although the debt contracted with Banque de Luxembourg (BDL) dates back to April 2010, the first evidence that a problem was brewing dates back to an inspection dated 1995 [see breakdown]. So, almost 30 years have passed. Even though she spent more hours with her racket in her hand than doing anything else, Arantxa has had a serious problem hanging over her for more than half her life. Resources and inaction have brought us here.
The debt was his but the culprits were always others. This is the summary of the procedure that comes to an end today. The chief judge of the Criminal Court No. 25 of Barcelona has believed that Arantxa was always outside the administration of his fortune, whose management was sometimes wrong and more recently, of a criminal nature: “It is absolutely credible that Aránzazu Sánchez Vicario does not had any knowledge of asset management, nor probably any interest, and that he had always transferred management of his assets to third parties. Once she took control of her assets and the management of her father and B. C. M. ceased, it is evident that another person she trusted took charge of said management.” Her honor refers to Emilio Sánchez and Bonaventura Castellanos, caretakers of the tennis player’s interests until November 2009 when she withdrew all powers from them before a notary to assume them with her own signature.
Josep Santacana, sentenced to three years and three months in prison, appears in the sentence as the demiurge of a plan to evade Arantxa’s obligation with the Luxembourg bank, which consisted of selling all his properties in Spain and Andorra, putting them in the name of a company created to that effect in Uruguay and hence the seizure of assets for which they have been prosecuted. The benefits of such operations have not appeared to date. Her honor admits that Arantxa was aware of both what was happening with her assets and that she was a debtor to the BDL but that she “did not have the capacity or knowledge to direct the depatrimonialization operations.”
And here is the crux: Arantxa did not sit in the dock for dragging her feet or playing dumb with her creditor, but rather as co-author with her husband of a punishable crime of insolvency. And this changes everything. Your defense strategy has been brilliant: I assume my responsibility since I contracted the debt but I will demonstrate that I would be incapable of designing a similar plan and since I have advanced a payment (eight years late) and I am committed to collaborating, I deserve the minimum penalty. On the contrary, convinced that he would emerge successfully from a problem that he encountered when he married, Santacana opted to declare himself innocent and argue that he always acted in the name and by order of his wife. To his chagrin, those accused as front men agreed that they always acted under the direct order of Mr. Santacana and to him they delivered the envelopes containing several of the successive payments.
The BDL and the Prosecutor’s Office assessed in their final conclusions that Arantxa admitted guilt, had made himself available for investigation and that he began to pay his debt by contributing capital and depositing half of his salary, an amount that today would be close to two millions of euros. The first payment occurred in 2018, curiously, the year in which we learned that he had broken up with Josep Santacana. Why did he decide to collaborate then and not before? Did she come to trust so much that her husband’s indolence was the right path – “he forced me not to pay, he told me not to worry, he maintained at the oral hearing” – and the blindfold only fell off when it was over? love?
