MADRID (AFP) - Spanish King Juan Carlos's daughter Cristina is moving with her children to work in Switzerland, her employer said, two months after a court named her in a corruption case against her husband.

The scandal has plunged Juan Carlos's family into its worst popularity crisis in his nearly four-decade reign.

A judge in May ordered an investigation into Cristina's tax affairs as part of a tax and money-laundering case against her husband, the former Olympic handball player Inaki Urdangarin.

Cristina, 48, a manager in the social programmes foundation of the Catalan finance group CaixaBank, will now work in Geneva on its joint projects with UN institutions, the foundation said in a statement.

A source close to her family told AFP that Cristina and her four children "will go there very soon so that the children can start school in Geneva in September".

"Urdangarin is staying in his home in Barcelona," where the family currently live, the source added.

The judge, Jose Castro, is investigating accusations that Urdangarin and his former business partner Diego Torres embezzled six million euros (S$10 million) in public funds meant for sports events.

The money was allegedly placed in the non-profit Noos Institute, which Urdangarin chaired from 2004 to 2006 and of which Cristina was a board member.

Neither she nor Urdangarin has been formally charged with any crime.

Cristina earned an image as a modern princess when she started working for the Caixa foundation in 1993.

But the royal family's popularity rating has suffered from the Urdangarin affair as well as a controversial elephant-hunting trip by the 75-year-old king last year.