The former president of the Spanish Football Federation Luis Rubiales is already appearing before the judge who is investigating him to try to clear up suspicions of irregularities in contracts of the federative entity with him at the head and in the controversial transfer of the Super Cup to Saudi Arabia with the mediation of Gerard Piqué .
He has been away from the RFEF for months due to the scandal surrounding the non-consensual kiss he gave to the player Jenni Hermoso in the World Cup final in Sydney, for which he is facing a request for two and a half years in prison for sexual assault and coercion in the National Court, Rubiales returns this Monday to another court, investigative court number four in Majadahonda (Madrid).
There he must testify as a defendant in a case in which crimes such as unfair administration or corruption in business are being investigated and for which he was arrested a few hours after getting off the plane that brought him from the Dominican Republic, the country where he was when the riot broke out. police operation.
Rubiales appears, after changing lawyers, just a few days after the official proclamation of Pedro Rocha as the new president of the RFEF, as the only candidate, one day after the Higher Sports Council (CSD) announced the creation of a commission to supervise the RFEF operation in the coming months.
Rocha, who was his economic vice president in the RFEF, a few weeks ago joined the list of those investigated in this case due to the lack of knowledge of many of the questions that were asked in his witness statement. About the Super Cup, he said, he didn’t know anything.
The contract that led to the celebration of that tournament in Saudi Arabia is one of those that Rubiales, who has always denied any irregularity, will have to clarify. Below are some of the main axes of the research:
Did you receive payments from Piqué?
It is the origin of the investigation, which was born in 2022 and has been partly secret until now. The judge investigates the contract signed in 2019 by the RFEF to bring the celebration of this tournament to Saudi Arabia and the role of the company Kosmos, owned by former Barça player Gerard Piqué, in the negotiation.
Investigators are investigating whether the Kosmos group or Piqué himself could have given “financial gifts” to Rubiales or other federation executives “as a result of the negotiation” of the contract.
This is stated in the second rogatory commission that the judge sent to Andorra to discover the “complete traceability” of the payments that the Saudi company Sela Company made to Kosmos, payments that continue to reach a company account, recently blocked by the judge. , which sees “legally controversial” the million-dollar amounts set “as a commission or success fee” in favor of Piqué’s company.
The role of “Nene”
Aside from the Super Cup, the judge investigates other RFEF contracts, such as that of the company Gruconsa for the works on the La Cartuja stadium in Seville.
This company is not formally investigated in the case and what is being investigated is whether this contract, with Luis Rubiales at the head of the RFEF, was made “in exchange” for this company making “payments” to a company managed by his “friend.” “Francisco Javier Martín, known as ‘Nene’.
This is the company Dismantec, whose profits “could also go” to the former federation president, according to the Civil Guard suspects.
When the police operation broke out, on March 20, Rubiales was with Martín Alcaide in the Dominican Republic, a country to which he had moved to try to do business.
Precisely, the investigation also delves into the integration of Rubiales into the “corporate network” of ‘Nene’, who, according to the judge, would have created companies in Spain and the Dominican Republic through which he would try to “hide the fate of the funds” received by Gruconsa.
The creation of the “external control commissioner”
Also in the focus of the investigators is Rubiales’ decision to create the position of external control commissioner in the RFEF and entrust his duties to lawyer Tomás González Cueto, one of the detainees in this case who also went before the judge.
The arrival of Rubiales at the head of the RFEF, highlights the Civil Guard in one of its reports, would have meant “a considerable increase in the turnover” of Cueto’s law firm: from 500,000 euros a year to 3 million, according to the former president himself. federative.
2024-04-29 08:00:45
#suspicions #Rubiales #clear #today #statement #investigator
