Spanish King's brother-in-law to appeal fraud conviction

The Spanish King's brother-in-law Inaki Urdangarin will appeal against a court conviction following a trial for fraud and tax evasion, for which he was sentenced to six years and three months in prison, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Urdangarin's wife, Princess Cristina, was acquitted of being an accessory to tax fraud at the end of the year-long trial, seen as a test of whether Spain's rich and powerful are accountable to the law.

Asked by journalists if he would appeal the verdict against Urdangarin in the Supreme Court, his lawyer Mario Pascual Vives said "Yes. I'm working on it".

The trial, and the long investigation that preceded it, had been closely followed in a country jaded by high-level political and banking corruption cases, where inequality has grown in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

The public prosecutor Pedro Horrach told Spanish state television TVE on Tuesday that he had yet to decide if Urdangarin would be permitted to post bail to avoid being immediately sent to jail until the sentence was final.

He and Princess Cristina have lived in Switzerland with their four children since 2013. (Reporting By Maria Vega Paúl and Jesús Aguado; editing by Paul Day and John Stonestreet)

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)