World News

By Monica Machicao

LA PAZ (Reuters) – Inmates in Bolivia’s overcrowded prisons are now able to reduce their jail time by reading books in a new program influenced by one in Brazil that aims to spread literacy and give hope despite a notoriously slow judicial process.

The state program “Books behind bars” offers detainees a chance get out of jail days or weeks in advance of their release date. Bolivia does not have a life sentence or death penalty, but pre-trial detention can last for many years due to a slow judicial system.

The program has been launched in 47 prisons that do not have resources to pay for education, reintegration or social assistance programs for prisoners, the Andean country’s Ombudsman’s Office says.

So far, 865 inmates are sifting through prose, improving their reading and writing skills. One of them is Jaqueline, who has already read eight books in a year and has passed four reading tests.

“It is really hard for people like us who have no income and who do not have family outside,” she said. “There are people here, for example, who are just learning how to read and write.”

Nadia Cruz with the Ombudsman’s office said the intention is to encourage inmates awaiting trial.

“That is important because what is reduced (on the sentences) is relatively little, it is hours or days in some cases, depending on what the board decides,” she told Reuters.

With a daily salary of 8 bolivianos ($1.18), incarcerated Bolivians are forced to work to be able to eat and pay the high court costs to be released.

The country’s prisons and jails have long suffered from overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, with some detainees staging protests over the lack of health care, according to Human Rights Watch.

Amid these difficulties, learning to read can be like escaping the prison walls, at least in the mind, said Mildred, an inmate at the Obrajes women’s prison in the highland city of La Paz.

“When I read, I am in contact with the whole universe. The walls and bars disappear,” she said.

($1 = 6.7900 bolivianos)

(Reporting by Monica Machicao; Writing by Daniel Ramos and Carolina Pulice; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas will meet Tuesday with Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican official said in a tweet Monday afternoon.

Ebrard also said he will have a meeting to discuss investments in Central America and Mexico’s southern region.

(Reporting by Diego Ore; Writing by Kylie Madry)

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ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece lifted COVID-19 restrictions on Sunday for foreign and domestic flights, its civil aviation authority said, ahead of the summer tourism season that officials hope will see revenues bouncing back from the pandemic slump.

To fly in or out of the country, travellers were previously required to show either a vaccination certificate, a certificate saying they had recovered from coronavirus or a negative test.

From May 1, passengers and crew will need only to wear a face mask, the civil aviation authority said.

The summer tourism season typically begins after the Greek Orthodox Easter, which was on April 24. Greece is expecting high numbers of visitors this year, with officials predicting revenues reaching 80% of 2019 levels. That was a record year before the pandemic brought travel to a halt.

With infections waning, restaurants and retail shops returned to 100% capacity on Sunday, allowing customers in without proof of vaccination but with a mask.

Greece has reported 3,323,922 cases so far and 29,153 deaths from COVID.

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Frances Kerry)

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By Greg Torode, Martin Quin Pollard and Yew Lun Tian

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) -From countering a Western “information war” during a Taiwan conflict to using “shock and awe” to swiftly subdue the island’s forces, Chinese strategists are soaking up lessons from Russia’s Ukrainian quagmire, diplomats, scholars and analysts say.

   Chinese military experts are discussing the conflict in private chat groups, offering their takes on Western involvement in Ukraine and Russia’s perceived failings, say two scholars and four Asian and Western diplomats who are in touch with Chinese strategists.

    Although their conclusions have yet to surface in official military journals or state media, Russia’s failure to quickly crush the Ukrainian military is a key topic – as are fears about how well China’s untested forces would perform.

    “Many Chinese experts are monitoring this war as if they are imagining how this would unfold if it happened between China and the West,” said Beijing-based security scholar Zhao Tong of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

    Russia’s approach in the early stages of the war did not subdue Ukrainian forces, which emboldened the international community to intervene with intelligence sharing, military equipment and the economic isolation of Russia.

“China probably should think about conducting a much stronger and much more comprehensive operation at the very beginning to shock and awe the Taiwanese forces to secure a major advantage,” Zhao said, referring to observations from Chinese strategists.

They believe securing that advantage would “deter enemy forces from being willing to intervene”, he said.

Singapore-based scholar Collin Koh said such an approach would create its own problems for China’s People’s Liberation Army.

“If you are going to ‘shock and awe’ Taiwan with overwhelming force in the initial stages, there might be a lot of civilian casualties,” said Koh, of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. That would make occupation difficult and harden international opposition.

“The Chinese can’t have any illusions now that they will be welcomed as liberators in Taiwan and given supplies and assistance,” he said.

Taiwan also has greater missile capabilities than Ukraine, allowing for pre-emptive strikes on a Chinese build-up or attacks on Chinese facilities after an invasion.

Neither China’s defence ministry nor China’s Taiwan Affairs Office immediately responded to requests for comment.

Russian forces invaded eastern Ukraine starting on Feb. 24, reducing towns and cities to rubble amid stiff resistance, losing thousands of troops as well as tanks, helicopters and aircraft. British officials estimated this week that 15,000 Russian troops have died; other sources suggest a higher number.

More than 5 million people have fled after what Russia describes as a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and Western governments say this a false pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression by President Vladimir Putin.

INFORMATION WAR

Chinese strategists also worry about how Russia is contending with indirect Western military assistance, a factor China would also face in a Taiwan scenario, say two scholars and four diplomats.

    Chinese experts are privately arguing about the need for Beijing to better compete in the so-called information war, which has complicated Russia’s position on the battlefield, Zhao said.

Besides isolating Russia economically, Western diplomatic efforts – and reporting on atrocities in the war zone – have made it easier to provide aid for Ukraine and harder for Russia to find outside support.

Zhao said that to Chinese strategists, one of the most important parts of the current conflict was how Western nations “are able to manipulate, from their perspective, international opinion and decisively change the international response to the war.”

Some Chinese strategists believe that the control of information has created a much worse impression of Russian performance than is warranted.

   “There are a lot of discussions about how China needs to pay great attention to this information domain,” Zhao said.

LOGISTICAL CHALLENGES

Some analysts note that the Ukrainian campaign was under way long before Russian forces invaded in late February, with months of build-up on the Russian side of the border. Those efforts were easily tracked by private sector open-source intelligence firms and repeatedly highlighted by U.S. and other governments.

“Taiwan would present a far greater logistical challenge than Ukraine, and to ready an invasion force on that scale undetected would be incredibly difficult,” said Alexander Neill, who runs a strategic consultancy in Singapore.

China’s military leaders also have for decades looked to Moscow for not just weapons but also structural and command doctrine.

Russian and Chinese forces have staged increasingly intensive joint exercises in recent years, including large-scale combined arms operations in Russia in September 2020.

Strategic assumptions from this collaboration, however, are being tested. In 2012 the PLA adopted units similar to Russian Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG) – supposedly swift, nimble and self-supporting units. But Russian BTGs have become bogged down in Ukraine and proven vulnerable to attack.

Russia has also struggled to coordinate the involvement of several military districts in the Ukraine war. Chinese analysts worry a Chinese invasion across the Taiwan Strait – widely seen as a far greater military challenge – would face similar problems, as it requires smooth co-operation across its recently formed Southern, Eastern and Northern Theatre Commands.

Russia’s forces in Ukraine have had command breakdowns and low morale. Analysts say it’s unclear how Chinese troops – untested since they invaded northern Vietnam in 1979 – would perform in a modern conflict.

“We’ve seen signs of alarming indiscipline from Russian troops, which is a reminder that there is so much we don’t know about Chinese troops would perform under the pressures of war,” Neill said. “For all the political indoctrination, we just don’t know how resilient they would be.”

(Reporting By Greg Torode in Hong Kong and Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; additional reporting by Yew Lun Tian. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

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By Chen Lin

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Beijing’s zero-COVID strategy has had dire consequences for the millions Chinese living abroad, most of whom have been unable to see family and friends at home for two years even as the rest of the world eases travel restrictions.

Some cannot afford the sky-high cost of flights and others fear getting stuck in harsh lockdown on arrival. All of them are anxious about the well-being of loved ones back in China.

Ba Lina, a marketing executive based in London, is ridden with guilt over not being able to see her ageing parents.

“I feel helpless and angry, I haven’t been able to see my family for years,” she said.

Reuters spoke with a dozen Chinese nationals in New York, London, Sydney and Singapore about their frustration at being separated from their families in China.

For starters, prices of international flights to China have soared. A one-way ticket within the next six months from Singapore to Guangzhou costs about 80,000 yuan ($12,088.43) due to limited flights with only business-class seats available. Pre-pandemic, the same trip on economy class cost under $370.

Li Wenqi booked a flight from London to China in early 2021 after he graduated from a British university with a masters degree in finance. But he said the flight was suspended multiple times and he was asked to top up the fare by an “exorbitant” amount before he could fly.

“I have given up, I’ll just stay in London. It will even be harder for me to find a job in China given the lockdown situation there,” said Li, who is now working as a waiter in London.

Those lucky enough to return to their homeland face being locked down on arrival under some of the most stringent restrictions seen anywhere in the world during the pandemic.

In Shanghai, the epicentre of China’s coronavirus outbreak, some residents have complained of being forcibly removed from their homes and bussed to makeshift quarantine centres as part of the city’s strict lockdown measures.

Tony Zeng, a Singapore permanent residency holder who got stuck in a lockdown during a visit to China this year, said he was contemplating a change of citizenship.

“After seeing the inefficiency of the Chinese government in dealing with COVID and heavy censorship of COVID-related information that is not in favour of the government, I prefer staying in Singapore now, and perhaps consider converting citizenship down the road,” he said.

Bingqin Li, a professor of social policy and governance at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said China’s strict lockdowns were undermining faith in the government.

“The lockdowns and chaos are affecting the confidence level of people towards the government … the longer the turning point takes to come, the more (trust in government) will be affected and the longer it will take to recover,” she said.

ARDUOUS JOURNEY HOME

To be sure, Chinese living abroad can still return if they are determined.

Travellers from Singapore, for example, have to take a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test seven days prior to departure, a PCR test and an IgM anti-body blood test two days prior to departure, and another PCR test 12 hours before the flight.

They then have to apply for a “health code” with their mobile phone by uploading the certifications. An Antigen Rapid Test (ART) six hours prior to departure is also required, before they can finally board the plane.

Only those who had a Chinese vaccine are eligible for waivers of the IgM anti-body blood test. Such requirements may vary slightly across countries.

On arrival in China, travellers have to be quarantined at a designated hotel for 14 to 28 days depending on the city, followed by additional days of home quarantine.

The Chinese foreign ministry said China’s COVID measures were designed to protect the people, including from imported cases.

The National Immigration Administration said “strict and tight” border controls were needed as COVID-19 continues to spread across the world.

“I can understand why it is so strict as the Chinese population is huge, but it is very painful to bear,” said Xiang Xiaoxue, a Chinese living in Singapore.

($1 = 6.6179 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Chen Lin in Singapore; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden’s government said on Friday it had put aside up to 1.6 billion Swedish crowns ($163 million) to strengthen its military infrastructure on the strategically important island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea amid increased tensions with nearby Russia.

Sweden has been rebuilding its military over the last decade, particularly since Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation”, has added urgency to Sweden’s rearmament programme and sparked a debate about whether it – and Nordic neighbour Finland – should join NATO.

The latest tranche of money will go to expand a barracks and other infrastructure on the island of Gotland, which is seen as strategically key to control of the Baltic.

“The aim is to be able to house many more conscripts and to make operations more effective, and in that way contribute to greater capacity … on Gotland,” Financial Markets Minister Max Elger told reporters.

Sweden reactivated the army’s Gotland Regiment in 2018, which had been disbanded more than a decade earlier, and has reinforced the island’s defence with ground-to-air missiles and other measures.

Gotland, Sweden’s biggest island, lies around 330 kilometres (205 miles) north of Kaliningrad, the headquarters of Russia’s Baltic Fleet.

($1 = 9.7726 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Simon Johnson; editing by Niklas Pollard and Gareth Jones)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. ex-Marine Trevor Reed arrived back in the United States, his spokesperson said on Thursday, after being freed by Russia in a prisoner swap that took place amid the most tense bilateral relations in decades over the war in Ukraine.

Reed was released on Wednesday on an airport tarmac in Ankara, Turkey, in exchange for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko.

The swap was not part of broader diplomatic talks and did not represent an American change in approach on Ukraine, U.S. officials said. Russian-American ties have been at their worst since the Cold War era following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions imposed on Moscow.

Reed, from Texas, was back in the United States, his spokesperson said without elaborating.

Reed’s parents said earlier he would be taken to a military hospital for monitoring. Senior U.S. officials said the 30-year-old was in “good spirits” despite some health issues.

Reed was convicted in Russia in 2019 of endangering the lives of two police officers while drunk on a visit to Moscow. The United States called his trial a “theater of the absurd.”

The 30-year-old American was released in exchange for Yaroshenko, who was arrested by American special forces in Liberia in 2010 and convicted of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the United States. Russia had proposed a prisoner swap for Yaroshenko in July 2019 in exchange for any American.

Russian news agencies reported that Yaroshenko landed back in Moscow and Wednesday and was reunited with his wife and daughter.

The months of tense diplomacy that led to Reed’s release focused strictly on securing his freedom and were not the beginnings of discussions on other issues, senior Biden administration officials said. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the swap followed a lengthy negotiation process.

“The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly,” Biden added.

Russian news agencies reported on April 4 that Reed had ended a hunger strike and was being treated in his prison’s medical center. Reed’s parents said at the time that he had been exposed to an inmate with tuberculosis in December. The prison service said Reed tested negative for tuberculosis.

U.S. officials were working to free another American held in Russia, Paul Whelan, also a former Marine, Biden said. Whelan was sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges in June 2020.

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was detained at a Moscow airport on Feb. 17 when a search of her luggage allegedly revealed multiple cannabis oil vape cartridges. She faces up to 10 years in prison.

(Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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BERLIN (AP) — Germany was the biggest buyer of Russian energy during the first two months since the start of the war in Ukraine, an independent research group said Thursday.

A study published by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air calculates that Russia earned 63 billion euros ($66.5 billion) from fossil fuel exports since Feb. 24, the date Russian troops attacked Ukraine.

Using data on ship movements, real-time tracking of gas flows through pipelines and estimates based on historical monthly trade, the researchers reckoned Germany alone paid Russia about 9.1 billion euros for fossil fuel deliveries in the first two months of the war.

Claudia Kemfert, a senior energy expert at the German Institute for Economic Research who was not involved in the study, said the figures were plausible given the recent sharp increase in prices for fossil fuels. Last year Germany paid about 100 billion euros in total for imports of oil, coal and gas — a quarter of which went to Russia, she said.

The German government said it couldn’t comment on estimates and declined to provide any figures of its own, saying these would need to come from companies that procure the coal, oil and gas.

Germany has faced strong criticism for its reliance on Russia fossil fuels despite warnings from allies that this could endanger its own and European security. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed back last year against U.S. efforts to sanction a Russian gas pipeline to Germany, a decision strongly backed by her successor, Olaf Scholz, whose Social Democratic Party have long advocated energy cooperation with Russia.

The pipeline was only frozen by Scholz’s new center-left government shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has since scrambled to find alternative energy supplies, particularly for Russian natural gas, which now accounts for 35% of Germany’s total imports.

Kemfert said a recent pledge by the German government to produce electricity only from renewable sources by 2035 was welcome.

“But as long as Germany continues to buy fossil fuels, whether from Russia or other autocracies, it undermines both its own credibility and its energy security,” she said.

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which is based in Finland and funded through grants and research contracts, said the second biggest importer of Russia fossil fuels in the two months since the outbreak of war was Italy (6.9 billion euros), followed by China (6.7 billion euros).

As a whole, the European Union accounted for 71% of Russia’s total income from oil, gas and coal, worth approximately 44 billion euros, it said.

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POKROVSK, Ukraine (AP) — The U.S. defense chief urged Ukraine’s allies to “move at the speed of war” to get more and heavier weapons to Kyiv as Russian forces rained fire on eastern and southern Ukraine amid new fears that the fighting could spill over the country’s borders.

For the second day, explosions rocked the separatist region of Trans-Dniester Tuesday in neighboring Moldova, knocking out two powerful radio antennas. And a Russian missile hit a strategic railroad bridge linking Ukraine’s Odesa port region to neighboring Romania, a NATO member, Ukrainian authorities said.

Meanwhile, two other neighboring NATO members, Poland and Bulgaria, said the Kremlin is cutting off natural gas supplies starting Wednesday, the first such actions of the war. Poland has been a major gateway for the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and confirmed this week that it is sending the country tanks.

Poland said it was well-prepared after working for years to reduce its reliance on Russian energy. Poland also has ample natural gas in storage, and it will soon benefit from two pipelines coming online, analyst Emily McClain of Rystad Energy said.

Bulgaria gets over 90% of its gas from Russia, and officials said they were working to find other sources, such as from Azerbaijan.

Both countries had refused Russia’s demands that they pay in rubles, as have almost all of Russia’s gas customers in Europe.

Two months into the fighting, Western arms have helped Ukraine stall Russia’s invasion, but the country’s leaders have said they need more support fast.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin convened a meeting Tuesday of officials from about 40 countries at the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, and said more help is on the way.

“We’ve got to move at the speed of war,” Austin said.

He said he wanted officials to leave the meeting “with a common and transparent understanding of Ukraine’s near-term security requirements because we’re going to keep moving heaven and earth so that we can meet them.”

After unexpectedly fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces thwarted Russia’s attempt to take Ukraine’s capital, Moscow now says its focus is the capture of the Donbas, the mostly Russian-speaking industrial area in eastern Ukraine.

In the town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, people fleeing the shelling lined up Tuesday to board a train headed to the far west of the country. One person was lifted onto the train in a wheelchair, another on a stretcher.

The passengers took with them cats, dogs, a few bags and boxes, and the memory of those who did not flee in time.

“We were in the basement, but my daughter didn’t make it and was hit with shrapnel on the doorstep” during shelling on Monday, said Mykola Kharchenko, 74. “We had to bury her in the garden near the pear tree.”

He said his village, Vremivka, was under heavy fire for four days and all but destroyed. With tears in his eyes, Kharchenko said he somehow held himself together at home, but once he reached the train station he fell apart. In a flash of anger, he lashed out at Russia.

“Is this liberation? From whom am I, a Russian speaker, from whom am I being liberated? From whom? From my daughter? From everything I have built during my whole life?

In the gutted southern port city of Mariupol, authorities said Russian forces hit the Azovstal steel plant with 35 airstrikes over 24 hours. The plant is the last known stronghold of Ukrainian fighters in the city. About 1,000 civilians were said to be taking shelter there with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders.

Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, said Russia was using heavy bunker bombs. He also accused Russian forces of shelling a route they had offered as an escape corridor from the steel mill.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region of the Donbas, said on the Telegram messaging app that Russian forces “continue to deliberately fire at civilians and to destroy critical infrastructure.”

Ukraine also said Russian forces shelled Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, which lies in the northeast, outside the Donbas. But it is seen as key to Russia’s apparent bid to encircle Ukrainian troops in the Donbas from the north, east and south.

Ukrainian forces struck back in the Kherson region in the south.

The attack Tuesday on the bridge near Odesa — along with a series of strikes on key railroad stations a day earlier — appeared to signal a major shift in Russia’s approach. Until now, Moscow has spared strategic bridges, perhaps in hopes of keeping them for its own use in seizing Ukraine. But now it seems to be trying to thwart Ukraine’s efforts to move troops and supplies.

No injuries were reported in the strike on the bridge, and Ukraine’s military said repair work was underway.

The southern Ukraine coastline and Moldova have been on edge since a senior Russian military officer said last week that the Kremlin’s goal is to secure not just eastern Ukraine but the entire south, so as to open the way to Trans-Dniester, a long, narrow strip of land with about 470,000 people along the Ukrainian border where about 1,500 Russian troops are based.

It was not clear who was behind the blasts in Trans-Dniester, but the attacks gave rise to fears that Russia is stirring up trouble so as to create a pretext to either invade Trans-Dniester or use the region as another launching point to attack Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the explosions were carried out by Russia and were “designed to destabilize,” with the intention of showing Moldova what could happen if it supports Ukraine.

Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, said the U.S. was still looking into blasts and trying to determine what was going on, but added: “Certainly we don’t want to see any spillover” of the conflict.

With the potentially pivotal battle for the east underway, the U.S. and its NATO allies are scrambling to deliver artillery and other heavy weaponry in time to make a difference.

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said her government will supply Gepard self-propelled armored anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has faced mounting pressure to send heavy weapons such as tanks and other armored vehicles.

Austin noted that more than 30 allies and partners have joined the U.S. in sending military aid to Ukraine and that more than $5 billion worth of equipment has been committed.

The U.S. defense secretary said the war has weakened Russia’s military, adding, “We would like to make sure, again, that they don’t have the same type of capability to bully their neighbors that we saw at the outset of this conflict.”

A senior Kremlin official, Nikolai Patrushev, warned that “the policies of the West and the Kyiv regime controlled by it would only be the breakup of Ukraine into several states.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov cautioned that if the Western flow of weapons continues, the talks aimed at ending the fighting will not produce any results.

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Gambrell reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalist Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, David Keyton in Kyiv, Oleksandr Stashevskyi at Chernobyl, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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MADRID (AP) — The Spanish government is set to pass a decree Tuesday aimed at boosting transparency in a monarchy still reeling from scandals involving King Felipe VI’s father, Juan Carlos. The move comes a day after Felipe made public his personal assets of 2.6 million euros ($2.8 million) for the first time .

The government said the decree, to be approved at its weekly cabinet meeting, would “strengthen transparency, accountability, efficiency and exemplarity in the royal household.”

In recent years Spain’s royal family has been tarnished by allegations of financial wrongdoing involving former King Juan Carlos. The most recent scandal involved investigations into millions of dollars in foreign accounts that saw Juan Carlos leave Spain for the United Arab Emirates in 2020.

On Monday, the palace said that the unprecedented disclosure of Felipe’s estate was part of a wider push toward a modernization aimed at making the monarchy “worthy of the respect and trust of its citizens.”

The palace said the king’s wealth was made up of around 2.3m euros in savings, current accounts and securities. The rest is in art, antiques and jewelry.

The king does not have any real estate or any financial dealings abroad, a palace official said.

Felipe’s wealth stems from his earnings as king and those he received as heir-in-waiting to Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014.

The palace statement noted that the king had paid tax on all his earnings.

Minutes after the disclosure, the Spanish government announced it would approve the transparency decree Tuesday.

In 2020, Felipe renounced his personal inheritance from his father after allegations emerged of financial wrongdoings. Months later, Juan Carlos left Spain and moved to the United Arab Emirates.

Investigations by Spanish and Swiss prosecutors into Juan Carlos’ dealing have since been shelved.

Juan Carlos, who helped steer Spain back to democracy following the death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975, was once Spain’s most respected public figure. But scandals of one type or another affecting the family began to mount in the later years of his reign.

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