Spanish
Santo Domingo.- The complaints filed by two former employees of the Spanish singer Julio Iglesias in his mansions in the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, which include sexual assaults and harassment, "are blackmail," said this Thursday the Dominican businessman George Nader, responsible for the artist's performances in the Caribbean country in the last twenty years.
"I know Julio, I never saw inappropriate behavior towards women in his mansion in Punta Cana (east of the Dominican Republic)," Nader said emphatically.You may be interested in: http://Julio Iglesias estalla y publica mensajes que le enviaban sus presuntas víctimas de acoso
According to the businessman, "it's blackmail (...) all this is a smokescreen", but "it will be clarified", and he said he is with the artist "24/7" because "he's my friend" for years. “My relationship with Julio is more of a friendship than a professional or business one,” the businessman added by phone. A former domestic worker of the singer and a physiotherapist have accused Julio Iglesias of sexual assault, harassment, and systematic workplace humiliation, events that allegedly occurred in 2021. Both, including a Dominican woman, have provided the Spanish Prosecutor's Office with employment documents, photographs, recordings, WhatsApp messages, or call logs to demonstrate the veracity of their accusations, which were initially revealed in a journalistic investigation by eldiario.es and Univision News in the United States and unveiled on January 13th.This same Thursday, several Dominican media outlets reproduced statements made in Madrid by Dominican businessman Frank Rainieri, founder of Grupo Puntacana, who said that he "never" heard or observed "any type of inappropriate behavior" in the mansion that Iglesias has in Punta Cana.
"In Punta Cana I never saw, neither I, nor my wife, nor my children -and we live next to him-, anything out of context. I never heard nor saw naked women on the beach. Had it been so, I would have seen them from my house. None of that ever happened", Rainieri affirmed. At the same time, he said that on the occasions when he visited the interpreter's house, "I also didn't see anything out of the ordinary." Although Julio Iglesias also has Dominican nationality and one of the accusers is Dominican, local authorities have not addressed the issue, while feminist organizations in the country have shown their support "firmly and publicly" for the alleged victims and have asked Spain to investigate the accusation "with a gender, anti-racist and human rights perspective".
