While Spain's former King Juan Carlos has gone into exile in UAE amid a series of corruption allegations, his ex-mistress has accused the royal family of trying to use her as a "scapegoat" in the entire scandal.

Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, who was in a relationship with King Juan Carlos between 2004 and 2009, has distanced herself from the scandal in her first-ever television interview. The Danish-born businesswoman, ex-wife of German Prince Johann Casimir, insisted that the Spanish royal family including her ex-boyfriend's wife Queen Sofia have launched a "smear campaign" against her, reports Daily Mail.

In the interview for True Royalty's "The Rise and Fall of The Spanish King," which will be aired on Friday, Sayn-Wittgenstein claimed that she and her family were threatened of "physical harm" by the head of the Spanish secret service in a bid to keep her silent. The 56-year-old alleged that she was visited by a man who said he "could not guarantee" her physical safety or the safety of her children if she doesn't follow his instructions and speaks to the media about the former King.

"You go into this survival mode, it's fight or flight and you realise you're in a dangerous situation," she said.

About her affair with the Spanish royal who is married to Queen Sofia for 58 years as of now, Sayn-Wittgenstein said: "I think he saw in me a different kind of woman than he had come across in the past. I think it fascinated him I treated him like a normal man rather than a symbol."

In another shocking allegation against Queen Sofia, Sayn-Wittgenstein claimed that the royal planned a smear campaign against her in an attempt to oust King Juan Carlos from the throne and ensure her son Felipe's accession.

"Because they were in such a dysfunctional marriage and she was deeply unhappy, the King told me that her only objective in life was to see her son take the throne," the German businesswoman alleged, adding: "I was used as a scapegoat while the Royal Family were rolling out an internal coup d'etat."

King Juan Carlos abdicated the throne in favour of his son King Felipe in June 2014 after an elephant-hunting trip with Sayn-Wittgenstein where he broke his hip. In her interview, the philanthropist alleged that anything that caused the royal family reputational problem was passed on to her, and that has continued even after the former king's abdication.

In an interview with BBC back in August, Sayn-Wittgenstein had compared herself to American socialite Wallis Simpson, the wife of England's former King Edward VIII who abdicated the throne to marry her after the monarchy did not allow him to marry a divorced woman.

King Juan Carlos
The ex-king's laywer Javier Sanchez-Junco, said his client was not trying to escape justice by going into exile and would remain available to prosecutors Photo: AFP / Pierre-Philippe MARCOU

"From the moment I came back from that trip, I was under full-blown surveillance. This was the beginning of a campaign to paint me as this Wallis Simpson, Lady Macbeth, evil character who'd led this wonderful man astray on this trip during a big economic crisis," she said.