There are many personalities indicated in the ‘papers of Pandora’ for its alleged corruptelas.
But only one of them has a prize for the transparency that bears the name of him: King Abdala II of Jordan, husband of Queen Rania.
The macro filtration of documents, which link great names with offshore societies, has allowed to discover that, in one of the reassures of the Middle East more accuced by poverty, their monarchs had a real emportium hidden to their faithful.
When in 2012, surfing the wave of the Arab springs that flourished throughout the region, the Jordans went to the streets to protest caricaturizing their royal house, Modelica Allende its borders, like Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, Abdalla II was being spent
6.5 million dollars in an apartment located in Georgetown, one of the most in Washington neighborhoods.
Such a whim is only a small sample of what the international consortium of research journalists obtained.
During the last decade, while the Jordans have repeatedly expressed their discomfort for subsidy cuts and the increase in the price of basic goods, their king has spent the whopping 106 million dollars (91.8 million euros) in farms
Luxury in the most desired places in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Only in 2014 were 35.9 million dollars.
Among the properties purchased through opaque societies is a house in the Ascot neighborhood, a stone’s throw, as it could not be otherwise, from the riding that cache per square meter accumulates.
To which other sumptuous dependencies are added in London, three apartments at High Standing in Washington overlooking the Potomac River and three other homes under construction in Point Dume, the new fashion site in Los Angeles.
One of these farms, overlooking the Pacific, houses a mansion with seven bedrooms purchased in 2014 for 33.5 million dollars.
The Royal Jordanian family is adapted to such luxuries for decades.
Or, if not, they tell Pedro Sánchez.
The president enjoyed last year of the Mareta, a palace of 30,900 square meters on the island of Lanzarote, who Huséin I, father of Abdalá II, ordered to build in the 70s to yield him later to Juan Carlos I. East in turn, what
He gave on to National Heritage.
The artist and local architect César Manrique was in charge of raising the elegant work, located on the beachfront in the term of Costa Teguise.
In 2015, Felipe VI decided to convert the site into a Canarian tourism promotion center.
And, what do the Jordanos of sizes dispensed?
“Although Jordan does not appear among the most corrupt countries in the region, citizens believe that corruption increases every year,” warns Victoria Silvia, an expert journalist in Jordan and analyst at the Nâr Research consulting.
Although the publication of the ‘papers of Pandora’ “has caught the regime by surprise,” Silvia emphasizes that “the reaction has been minimizing the facts, accusing the means of distorting” and cover the scandal in the Jordanian press.
Thus, neither a bad word in the media II, which at 59 years is having an annus horribilis – his own brother, Prince Hamza, was allegedly involved last April in a conspiracy to dethrone him.
Or, as the lawyers called their salary in Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands, “that you already know”, amen from the hermeticism that surrounded all these sumptuous shopping around the globe, and that only filtration has allowed it to attribute to the Jordanian monarch
.
All this at the same time that Jordan has been among the main recipients of external help in the US.
A support, which only in 2020, when the EU allocated 190 million euros to the Jordanian struggle against the Covid, translated at 1,500 million dollars, and which remains in question after the publication of the ‘papers of Pandora’.
The Royal House Jordana has gone out, in a statement, achieving not having published such details about its properties alluding to a security issue “and not to secrecy or an attempt to hide them.”
Last year, new protests took the streets of Aman, demanding the end of corruption and poverty in the Kingdom.
It was not a great burst similar to that of other neighboring countries, but sufficient, according to experts, as well as to reduce the abdala ii maneuver margin.
And yet, the police charged, imprisoned critics and their king came out to promise hard hand with evasors.
Who did he think exactly?
