Justice, at the request of FC Barcelona, ??has accelerated the Slaughter case after almost five years of paralysis. The case is investigating whether the former Real Madrid basketball player paid for a falsified passport from Equatorial Guinea to play as a community player.
Last week, the 27th investigative court of Madrid delivered the opening document for the oral trial to the last defendant who was yet to receive it, coach Hugo López, and now all that remains is for criminal court 3 to set a date for the trial, according to La Vanguardia could know. The law establishes that the opening of a trial must be personally notified to each of the accused and it has taken justice four and a half years to complete this procedure. The reason: he was unable to locate Marcus Slaughter and Andy Panko, a former North American player for Fuenlabrada and also accused of forging the passport.
It was FC Barcelona, ??which is appearing as an accusation, which through its lawyer, Jordi Pina, requested that international arrest warrants be issued to find Slaughter and Panko, and thus notify them that they were going to sit on the bench. Pina was appointed in the summer by Joan Laporta’s board to replace José Ángel González Franco, a lawyer trusted by Josep Maria Bartomeu’s board.
On July 25, 2023, the court, at the request of Barça, issued the arrest warrants. However, Slaughter was not found even though he was not hiding. Two days after said order, the former player was cheering on Real Madrid football at the Houston stadium during the last American tour, as evidenced by a photograph posted on his Instagram. Panko was arrested in August in Madrid and was placed at the disposal of the court, which notified him that he was being sent to trial. Slaughter was not arrested because justice never located him. Years ago they went to look for him at an address that turned out to be the offices of Real Madrid. The former center appointed a lawyer in November who appeared at court to collect the document.
The Slaughter case broke out nine years ago, in 2015, when first the Federation and then the Higher Sports Council detected irregularities in the passport of the Real Madrid player in his conversion to a citizen of Equatorial Guinea. This was common practice under the Cotonou agreement, which allows players from African, Caribbean and Pacific countries affiliated with a trade agreement with the EU to be considered as community players. Thanks to obtaining that document, Slaughter was able to play and win the 2015 League and Cup with Real Madrid as a community player. The Mexican Gustavo Ayón and the Argentine Facundo Campazzo occupied the non-EU positions. The Equatoguinean passport was so botched that pages 45 and 46 were missing and the number coincided with Panko’s.
Although the case seemed simple, since from the first minute the embassy of Equatorial Guinea certified that the documents were false, the case plunged into a spiral of delays and delays, in which the investigating court that has investigated the case and the criminal court that has to prosecute it have passed the ball to each other. When the first court sent the matter to him for judgment, the second court returned it because he considered that the defendants needed to be notified. The last precedent was on January 17, when the criminal court returned the case to the investigative court, arguing that the accused were missing to be informed. Between the time the accused were located and the document was delivered to them, four and a half years have passed, nine since the investigation began.
In recent months, FC Barcelona has presented briefs urging the trial to be held once and for all. The Barça club is awaiting the future sentence to demand, in case of conviction, the withdrawal of the League and the Copa del Rey that Real Madrid won in 2015 due to Slaughter’s improper alignment. On his day, he requested it before the sole judge of the ACB, who filed it pending what the court would decide. The Barça executives consulted by this newspaper assume that they will make the request to withdraw the title, but they point out that the last word will be that of the board of directors. Slaughter and Panko admitted having paid 35,000 euros in cash each to Ricard Nguema, a former Real Madrid youth player who had contacts in the government of Equatorial Guinea, for the passport. For all this operation, the Prosecutor’s Office requests sixteen months in prison for those accused of document falsification, while the rest of the accusations, including the CSD, the ACB, Barça and the Association of Spanish Basketball Players, ask for sentences of two years. and a half of prison that will force the accused to attend the trial. Furthermore, they appreciate that the facts also constitute a crime of sports corruption as they understand that the competition would have been altered by the improper alignment of Slaughter and Panko, and that the rest of the clubs would have been harmed. However, neither Barça, nor the ACB, nor the CSD considered it pertinent at the time to claim the imputation of Real Madrid, as a legal entity, despite the fact that it would have benefited, even indirectly, from the alleged crime. Madrid was considered to be an entity that acted as a third party in good faith, which registered Slaughter as an Equatorial Guinean without knowing that the document was falsified.
