Open a secret piece to investigate tax and banking information of Rubiales and Piqué
MADRID, 29 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The judge investigating the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Luis Rubiales, and the footballer Gerard Piqué for alleged crimes of corruption in business and unfair administration for the transfer of the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia, among others things, has demanded that the RFEF provide documentation on a “celebration” in Salobreña (Granada) and has admitted that the president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, appear as a popular accusation in the case.
In a series of files, to which Europa Press has had access, the head of the Court of First Instance and Instruction Number 4 of Majadahonda (Madrid), Delia Rodrigo, agreeing to what was requested by the Prosecutor’s Office, has asked the RFEF to contribute documentation about said “celebration”.
As reported by El Mundo, it is an alleged private party of Rubiales and other people that would have taken place in August 2020 in a villa in Salobreña and that, according to his uncle and former chief of staff, Juan Rubiales, would have paid with Federation money.
The RFEF, for its part, denied that it was a party and assured that it was an internal work meeting in which the accommodation was entirely paid by each attendee, including Juan Rubiales. “Neither the employees nor the RFEF incurred in any irregularity,” he said in a statement.
Specifically, the judge wants to know the cost of the stay and if it was paid with RFEF funds and cards, as well as the exact “reason, date and place” and “attendees who officially attended”.
It has also required the RFEF to provide the contracts and invoicing it has on the business it has had with a detective agency and a real estate company, allegedly involved in the alleged espionage against the president of the Association of Spanish Soccer Players (AFE) , David Aganzo.
The judge also affects the accounts of FC Andorra and Kosmos, Piqué’s club and company, respectively. She and she have asked different banks to provide her with statements of Kosmos movements, while she issues a rogatory commission to Andorra to obtain information about the football club’s accounts.
Finally, it has agreed to open a separate piece that it declares secret for at least 30 days to analyze the tax and banking information that arrives about the RFEF, Rubiales, Piqué and their businesses.
It should be remembered that this investigation, before the judge admitted a complaint against both in June, began in May after opening the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office for alleged irregularities in the management of Rubiales at the head of the RFEF and from, among other issues, the contract for the Spanish Super Cup to be played in Saudi Arabia with the mediation of Piqué.
In the complaint, presented by the leader of the National Training Center for Football Coaches (CENAFE), Miguel Ángel Galán, points to the commissions charged by the RFEF and Piqué’s company for the Spanish Super Cup tournament to be played in the Arab country. To that was added another from the Clean Hands union.
According to the complaint, Rubiales and Piqué concocted a “plan to profit” with the transfer of the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia in exchange for 24 million euros, “stubbornly” hiding the commissions, which “they disguised documents pretending that the payment was produced by a third party”. “The defendants began their plan in unity of interest, collaborating with each other in such a way that sometimes it was not easy to decide which of them was the president and which was the apparent commission agent,” he mentions.
In the letter, Galán affirms that the objective of Rubiales and Piqué, current captain of the Barcelona Football Club, was to “do business”, although they did not know “what”, “how” or “where”: “What they did know and wanted was to do it together”, highlights the complainant.
Rubiales “did not want” the 24 million euros that Piqué was going to collect to mediate in the operation to appear in “any document”. For Galán, one with the other “had colluded” in order to “hide” the commission, “making it opaque not only to Spanish society, but also to all the internal organs” of the RFEF “that could prevent them from commissioning of their actions”, as if it did not exist.
“In relations in which the position of President of the RFEF had been duly exercised, one would have to ask what could be the reason for planning tricks with an active player so that a competition is played in Madrid or Barcelona or another stadium or for the President to take care of improving the income of a club (Barcelona) to the detriment of its administrator, the RFEF”, he points out, given the option that the tournament was initially played in Barcelona.
Another of the points included in the complaint is the alleged commission from the Football Federation to a detective agency to “spy” on the president of the AFE, work that would have been paid with “an instrumental company.” “The follow-ups cost 11,764 euros, but they were not paid” by the RFEF, “but by a company dedicated to real estate development that belongs to an external lawyer and that regularly collects from the” federal body, he says.
Galán assures that if Rubiales commissioned David Aganzo, one of the union leaders, to spy for his “own benefit”, through an “intermediate company or screen” to hide the “obvious lack of legitimacy in the invasion of his privacy” and in charge RFEF funds, these are “very serious” and “criminal” behaviors.
A third reason included in the complaint points to whether the president of the RFEF pocketed in an “irregular” way a housing aid of 3,100 euros per month for “at least” nine months. While the fourth and last point deals with a “holiday” trip by Rubiales to New York “unduly” paid for by the Federation, “taking advantage of his power” and camouflaged as “for work.”
