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Amid La Liga and UEFA scandals, former head of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) Luis Rubiales has been convicted and given a six-month suspended sentence and fined €24,000. An earlier plea of not guilty on corruption and disobedience charges was dismissed by a Madrid criminal court on February 20.
Rubiales was arrested in November 2018 in relation to alleged financial irregularities before the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The RFEF’s attorney, Carlos Velasco, was also implicated, and resigned soon after.
A complaint was filed against Rubiales, Velasco, and RFEF sales director Francisco d’Alessandro, by Judge Leopoldo Estebanez.
The accusations stem from over €1.5m awarded to an intermediary to broker contracts between the RFEF and individual state companies operating in hydrocarbons, telecommunications, and tobacco industries, as well as in asbestos-cement sheet products, plus oversized marketing bonuses.
Rubiales, Velasco, and d’Alessandro denied wrongdoing. However, the judge had dismissed a previous guilty plea dealing with alleged misuse of funds, claiming there was no concrete evidence to sustain a guilty verdict.
Judge Estebanez insisted that it was clear that the contracts, signed less than a month before the World Cup started, represented overpayments, and that goods or services were not clearly stated. Instead there was a “vague description” of rights to logos, a clear contravention of the principle of competitive neutrality.
The ruling was met with opposition from Rubiales’ defense lawyers. They claimed that the evidence provided, particularly in relation to some of the bonuses awarded, was insufficient to prove a verdict of guilty against their client.
The case comes at a fraught time for Spanish football, with La Liga under investigation by UEFA as part of the latter’s efforts to tackle fraud and corruption in European football.
Last year, Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu faced calls to resign over the club’s signing of one of its former chiefs and former Barcelona president, Sandro Rosell, who at the time was jailed for corruption. Supporters held rallies outside the Nou Camp insisting that Bartomeu step down, and other Barcelona officials were barred from leaving the country to face similar cases.
The relevance and significance of the ruling in relation to the wider European football corruption and scandals needs to be explored in greater detail.
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