A “criminal plan” to “control” Granada and “defraud” millions with the transfer of footballers | Sports

Italian businessman Gino Pozzo, accused of landing at Granada CF, during an English Watford match, in 2019. Richard Heathcote (Getty Images)

The darkest side of football was hidden behind Granada CF’s accounts: a desire for “illicit” money, “opaque” corporate structures, a lack of “ethical culture”… That is the great conclusion reached by the Prosecutor’s Office. Anti-corruption in Operation Líbero, a judicial investigation that targets Gino Pozzo, owner of the English Watford and member of the clan that controls the Italian Udinese, and Enrique Pina Campuzano, alias Quique Pina, the businessman who presided over the Andalusian team of 2009 to 2016. According to the public ministry, which is asking for 12 years in prison for them, both executed a “long-term criminal plan” to take control of the club and defraud millions from the Treasury through “complex” money movements linked to the signing of players through a network of companies.

After more than five years of investigations, the Prosecutor’s Office has already put on the table its indictment in this summary, which is pending trial (the investigator issued an order to open an oral hearing a few days ago) and which has been promoted by the National Court. An investigation that led to Pina’s preventive imprisonment in 2018. “The accused launched a long-term criminal plan that, starting with the takeover of Granada CF in 2009 and through the execution of a complex strategy, would allow them to The capital gains that the club obtained through the transfer of professional soccer players were artificially transferred to Luxembourg and were not taxed in Spain, thus obtaining a notable economic profit to the detriment of the national Public Treasury,” summarizes the document signed by Anticorrupción, to which EL PAÍS has had access. To do this, adds the public ministry, the suspects “emptied the club’s treasury” and “simulated” that they needed a source of financing through a Luxembourg company, Fifteen Securitisation, which allowed the Andalusian team “to undertake the signing of a group of professional players in exchange for 95% of the amount of their future transfers to other clubs.

In this way, while in the sporting field the meteoric rise of Granada was taking shape – which in just two years went from Second B to First Division, where it was consolidated -, in the offices an alleged machinery with international tentacles was being created (in Italy, Luxembourg or the United Arab Emirates) to “hide” data from the authorities and the benefits obtained from the purchase and sale of players. Anticorruption estimates that, at least, almost 9.5 million euros were not paid to the Treasury for the Corporate Taxes of 2013, 2014 and 2015.

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In its letter, the Prosecutor’s Office requests 12 years in prison for Pozzo, Pina and the other two defendants: Raffaele de la Riva, administrator of the Luxembourg company used as an alleged front; and Jordi Trilles, collaborator of the Italian manager and former advisor of Granada. Anti-corruption also demands that million-dollar fines be imposed on all of them: 36.5 million euros on the son of the owner of Udinese, whom they point out as the ringleader; and 27.5 million to the other three, whom he defines as “cooperators.” For its part, the public ministry requests that the National Court order Granada as a legal entity to pay a fine of almost 27 million euros for three tax crimes. In addition, all of them are being asked to pay the almost 9.5 million (plus interest) defrauded in Corporate Tax installments.

Sources close to Enrique Pina insist that the accusations are unfounded and that, in the case of the Spanish businessman, he was only dedicated to sports management. In addition, they remember that the investigating judge archived the case, which was later reopened by the Criminal Chamber of the National Court. EL PAÍS has tried without success to obtain Pozzo’s version through the English club that he owns.

In the center, with his arms crossed, Enrique Pina, in the Granada FC authorities’ box, in 2014.

This judicial process especially places Quique Pina against the ropes. As EL PAÍS reported, the National Court already sentenced him to nine months in prison at the end of 2022 for plotting a parallel plot, together with his parents and his sister, to avoid paying 3.2 million euros that they had to pay to the Treasury as former responsible for CF Ciudad de Murcia, which the businessman also presided over. In that case (a derivative of this Operation Líbero that surrounds him with Pozzo), Pina decided to make an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office to ensure a minimum sentence – which would prevent him from going to jail -, thus admitting the “property emptying maneuvers” that He tried to hide his fortune while leading a full life – which included the enjoyment of high-end vehicles (Porsche, Aston Martin…) or a 500,000 euro yacht called El Duende.

Takeover of Granada

The Anticorrupción story places the origin of the plot in 2009, when Granada was sunk in the Second Division B of Spanish football and was going through significant “economic difficulties that jeopardized its continuity.” Those responsible for the club at the time sought, through a bankruptcy process, to create an “adequate scenario” to resolve the problems and thus be able to launch a new sports project that was “economically viable.” A breeding ground that led to the landing of Gino Pozzo and his collaborators through a “set of opaque structures.”

According to the accusation, the suspects devised a plan to first gain “control of the bankruptcy process”—acquiring “a significant percentage of the credits” carried by the club—which would later allow them to rise to the top of the Andalusian team. To do this, they allegedly used a company linked to Pozzo, Daxian 2009 SL, in which Pina was placed as administrator, who would later be named president of Granada and given “full powers” ​​in sports matters. The name of Pina, a former footballer who never reached the elite, was already resonating at that time in the offices due to his career at the head of Ciudad de Murcia. The Prosecutor’s Office emphasizes that all these maneuvers, which were followed to the “millimeter”, are detailed in an email intercepted from De la Riva and sent to Pozzo, among others.

The alleged “criminal” group, already infiltrated, asked to execute the bankruptcy proceedings and immediately began to deploy the first “accounting tricks.” For example, it acquired the rights to 12 players on the squad through a company based in the United Arab Emirates – for which a price of 8.6 million euros was agreed upon – according to the indictment, with “the with a view to the future conversion of the club into a Sports Public Limited Company” and with the objective of “artificially reducing the minimum share capital figure” that was going to be required.

“Defraud strategy”

Once this phase was over and with the club under control, the suspects supposedly activated the second part of the plan and began to “materialize the fraud strategy.” According to Anti-Corruption, they used a network of “instrumental” companies to “empty the club’s treasury” and pretend that it needed an external financing channel to acquire the rights of players, which was covered by the Luxembourg company Fifteen Securitisation. However, the “most” of the funds provided by said company actually came from Granada itself, from which they had previously been extracted.

“Once this scenario was created, the fraudulent strategy was carried out through the planned execution of a set of signing and transfer operations of professional footballers,” continues the indictment from the Prosecutor’s Office, which adds: “To this end, the accused They had to carefully control a multitude of variables that will affect a large group of players and a large number of instrumental entities: the contracts that have to be signed with the players, their amount, the dates, the movements of funds that will be used , the instrumental entities through which these funds are passed, with the necessary synchronization of payments and collections, and the accounting of the operations between Granada and Fifteen Securitisation. Some “complex movements of funds” that “actually lacked any sporting and economic logic”, but which allowed them not to pay taxes “in Spain on capital gains”.

Suspicious transfers

The Prosecutor’s Office places under suspicion transfers of players, at least, from 2013 to 2016, for which the Treasury was not taxed: among them, those of Guilherme Magdalena Siqueira (to Atlético de Madrid for nine million); Daniel Pudil (to Watford for 1.5 million); Allan Marques Loureiro (to Napoli for 14.1 million); Jeison Fabián Murillo (to Inter for eight million); Yacine Brahimi (to Porto for nine million, “although he declared for 6.5 million”); and Mikel Rico (to Athletic Club de Bilbao for 2.45 million). Likewise, the focus is on the relationship woven between Granada and Udinese, between whom an intense flow of money and footballers was also established.

In 2016, Granada was sold to Chinese investment group Wuhan DDMC Football Club Management.

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2024-01-16 13:06:13
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