Justice has confirmed seven years later that Eric Abidal’s liver transplant performed at the Hospital Clínic was completely legal. In an order to which La Vanguardia has had access, the judge decides to archive the case after proving that the organ donor was indeed the former soccer player’s cousin and that he did not receive any money in exchange for undergoing the intervention. The case began as a result of a conversation captured by the Civil Guard while Sandro Rosell had the phone tapped in which, together with the deceased Juanjo Castillo, they commented that they had bought a liver from Abidal. “Let’s see one thing, Sandro, it is that he is going against us, we bought an illegal liver from this guy and we sold it as belonging to the cousin, which was the cousin’s,” said the captured dialogue. And he added later: “We saved his life.” Now, seven years later, the judge concludes that after all the tests carried out “no objective evidence or data has been proven that could prove the veracity of the statements made there.”
One of the first steps that justice took after opening the judicial investigation was to prove the degree of relationship between Abidal and Gerard Armand, who claimed to be a cousin on his father’s side. “Eric Abidal’s father is the brother of Gerard’s mother” and, therefore, their grandmother is Arsene Abidal. This is proven in the original birth certificates of the parents,” states the judge. Another extreme was to determine if Gerard had been the one who had actually undergone the intervention or his donor status had been simulated. “The cousin underwent an examination that determined that “at the liver level, post-surgical changes from a right hepatectomy were observed with the presence of metal staples on the right margin and that “he had an abdominal scar.”
Once the doubts were dispelled, the investigation focused on discovering whether a payment to the cousin had been made. “If there is payment, it must be reflected either in bank accounts or real estate in his name, aspects that to date have not been duly accredited.” The payments that Abidal received from FC Barcelona were also reviewed and whether “any payment had been made by the club to the Score Agencies agency that represented the footballer” to later divert it to the cousin without the justice having found anything.
However, when it seemed that everything was justified and accredited, a suspicion arose: in the documentation there was no identity document for the donor or his residence permit. In the end, it turned out that the photocopies had been made incorrectly, but once the legality of the documents was verified and that they corresponded “without any doubt” to the donor. One of the last procedures that were carried out was intended to certify the degree of kinship between Gerard and Abidal through DNA analysis, but they were not carried out since it was not possible to “reach conclusive conclusions,” the judge maintains.
After receiving all the reports that were favorable to Eric Abidal, his lawyer, Carles Monguilod, demanded that the case be archived after so many years in which “the reputation of certain people had been called into question. “I think it is an impeccable resolution and that makes it very clear that there has been no crime.”
