The judge charges Pedro Rocha and suspends his statement as a witness

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has asked to charge the current interim president of the Spanish Football Federation, Pedro Rocha, in the Rubiales case after hearing him testify as a witness in court and reaching the conclusion that he needed a lawyer because he was incriminating himself by denying knowledge about matters and in particular, the Super Cup contract with Saudi Arabia, of which he should have been aware.

According to legal sources to ABC, after the request, the instructor Delia Rodrigo has suspended the appearance to issue an indictment order and summon him again, this time as an investigator, to subject him to interrogation with all the guarantees of the right of defense.

Rocha was summoned as a witness and the appearance began at 11 in the morning in the Court of Instruction number 4 of Majadahonda and barely an hour and a half had passed when, upon entering into dispute over the contracts between the Federation and the Saudi company SELA For the celebration of the Super Cup in that country, the situation has become complicated for him, who had already responded evasively to some of the questions.

Specifically, according to the sources present at the interrogation consulted by ABC, he assured that he knew “nothing” about the Super Cup contract because “that was in 2018” and he joined the Economic Commission of the Federation in 2020. The problem is that after that date an extension of the contract was signed that he also said he was unaware of and that, in theory, it should go through that body.

Regarding this matter, he has assured that he did not report the extension of the Saudi Arabia contract and that he does not know who confirmed it because “it has not gone through the economic commission” and if it has not entered that body, he does not know about it.

He has also responded that he did not talk about anything about it with the former president of the Federation, Luis Rubiales, and when questioned by the Anti-Corruption prosecutor, he even signed that he was finding out at that very moment that such an extension existed. “I repeat again that those negotiations were carried out by someone else,” he said, always according to the sources present in the statement investigated by this newspaper.

It is the same answer that he gave in the next line about the hiring of Gruconsa, the company at the center of the case for payments to a company owned by Rubiales’ friend, Javier Martínez Alcaide. Rocha has told the prosecutor that the contracting for the works on the Cartuja stadium did not go through the economic commission either. At that point, the prosecutor has requested that he be cited as a defendant.

2024-04-12 10:42:33
#judge #charges #Pedro #Rocha #suspends #statement #witness