The Prosecutor’s Office complicates – even more – the judicial ordeal that Luis Rubiales has ahead of him. A week after learning that he will be arrested when he returns from the Dominican Republic for an alleged case of corruption with the Super Cup contracts in the background, the former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) has learned that the Public Ministry is asking the Court National condemn him to two and a half years in prison for the non-consensual kiss and the alleged subsequent coercion of the women’s national team player Jennifer Hermoso.
Specifically, he requests one year in prison for a crime of sexual assault, as well as one year and six months for a crime of coercion as the perpetrator. The second request for conviction is the same as that requested for the rest of the accused: the former coach of the women’s team Jorge Vilda, the former marketing director of the Federation Rubén Rivera and for the director of the men’s team, Albert Luque. In addition, he proposes that Rubiales compensate Hermoso with 50,000 euros for the kiss and that the former president himself, along with the rest of the accused, also compensate the player with another 50,000 euros for the alleged coercion.
In a harsh statement, prosecutor Marta Durántez assumes that Rubiales kissed Hermoso “surprisingly and without consent or acceptance” from the player. And from there, faced with “the personal and professional consequences that could result”, the former president began to exert – along with the rest of the accused – “constant and repeated acts of pressure directly on the player […] with the purpose of publicly justifying and approving the kiss that he gave her against her will.” As a result of these pressures, according to the prosecutor’s account, Hermoso suffered “a situation of harassment that prevented him from developing his life in peace, tranquility and freely.”
The coercion, as can be seen from the document, was carried out in various acts. The first of them, after the medal ceremony, when Rubiales asks the RFEF women’s football director, Ana Álvarez, to take Hermoso out of the locker room to talk to her. There he urged her to make a public statement with which the victim did not agree. The next time, on the bus on the way to catch the flight that would bring them back to Spain, “he was forced to get off the bus abruptly” to sign a press release, the content of which “he did not share.” Despite this, she was referred to the media.
Already on the return flight, Rubiales, after various conversations with his trusted team, of which Vilda was a part, decided to use another means of pressure through Hermoso’s relatives who were traveling on the same plane. The accused praised Hermoso before her brother Rafael with “the sole purpose” of convincing her to hold the demonstration. Failure to do so, Rubiales warned, “would have negative consequences.”
On the trip to Ibiza at the end of August to celebrate the victory, Rivera and Luque came into play to participate in a video exonerating Rubiales. Hermoso did not change his position. Given “the resounding refusal received,” the prosecutor points out, Luque sent several WhatsApp messages to a friend of Hermoso “expressing her anger, alluding to the fact that the player, due to her age, had two years left in her career and that if This moment would surely help him get a position in the Federation.
The Public Ministry concludes by pointing out that “the situation of harassment by the accused towards Hermoso ceased when Rubiales was provisionally suspended by FIFA on August 26, 2023.”
