The judge investigating the ‘Rubiales case’ believes that the true role of footballer Gerard Piqué is still undiscovered. For this reason, in a recent resolution, the judge sees it as “necessary” to continue investigating his participation in bringing the Super Cup to Saudi Arabia, and for what he charged for intermediation work. According to the suspicions of the investigators, this commission would rise to four million euros.
“In light of the data accumulated to date, it is necessary to clarify in the investigation the authentic role of Piqué Bernabéu and his group of companies, both with respect to their eventual business relations with the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and with Saudi Arabian authorities linked to the celebration of the Super Cup tournament.”
The head of the Investigative Court number 4 of Majadahonda (Madrid) makes this statement in a rogatory commission sent to the Dominican authorities to demand judicial assistance to proceed with the entry and search of the home where the former president of the federation, Luis Rubiales, was residing.
The resolution is dated March 22, days before ‘Operation Brody’ broke out against a plot at the epicenter of the RFEF during the Rubiales era. Judge Delia Rodrigo explains that the relations between Piqué, Rubiales and the Saudi authorities “gave rise to movements of funds, some of which are the subject of this request for judicial cooperation.”
In the rogatory commission – accepted by the authorities of the Dominican Republic – the judge highlights that to achieve Rubiales and Piqué’s plan, various documents and contracts were signed, both by the RFEF – on whose behalf its president, the investigated Luis Rubiales—as well as on the Saudi side, “also appearing as a signatory and/or participant in the negotiations, as well as a beneficiary, Gerard Piqué, on behalf of Kosmos Holding SL, parent company of a group of companies, among which is Kosmos Football” .
The judge states that through Kosmos Football, a series of services were supposedly provided to the Saudi counterpart, to hold the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia, “with an economic benefit for both the RFEF and the Kosmos society. Football (4,000,000 euros/year for this company)”.
Piqué’s company would take this amount “despite there apparently being no agreement between the RFEF and said supposedly intermediary company,” he underlines.
For the judge, it is “notorious” that Piqué belonged as a player at the time of the agreements to FC Barcelona, ??a club that, along with Real Madrid CF, appears in one of the clauses of one of the contracts expressly contemplated. In this it was said that if you do not attend the tournament as a participant, due to not having obtained classification in the Spanish competition that gives you the right to do so, it gives rise to an economic penalty translated into a loss of income for the RFEF in the amount of five million euros for each edition in which this happened.
And he adds that in the Spanish competitions of the League and Cup of His Majesty the King, the refereeing team is statutorily dependent on the RFEF itself through the Technical Committee of Referees.
On the other hand, the instructor is struck by the fact that a few days after receiving a transfer to the Kosmos account from the Saudi entity Sela Sports, transfers were made to FC Andorra SADE, reaching a total of 4,036,300 euros in the period from mid-2019 to the first quarter of 2022.
Among other proceedings, the magistrate ordered the analysis of almost a hundred bank accounts linked to Piqué. The Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard has not found that payments to senior officials of the RFEF come from these accounts as a form of commission. However, the agents themselves asked the instructor for more information due to the suspicion that there could be some irregularity in that contract.
