Luis Rubiales, former president of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), investigated for an alleged crime of business corruption, unfair administration, money laundering and membership in a criminal organization, is already in Spain. He was arrested upon his arrival at Barajas airport, in Madrid, this Wednesday morning and has refused to give a statement to the Civil Guard. Just a few hours before, when he was still in the Dominican Republic, a country to which he traveled in March and where, he assures, he was trying to do business to make a living, he attended to the team of The objective, from La Sexta. In the interview, in the cocky and challenging tone that he usually does, she denies almost everything. And especially that he has illegally enriched himself, as the Civil Guard, who began the investigation in collaboration with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, senses, from his position as head of the RFEF. “I have gone as a defendant and as an accused and I have not done anything wrong, I have not been bitten in my life.”
The interviewer, journalist Ana Pastor, was unaware, as the general public was unaware, that Rubiales had changed his return ticket to Spain to land back in his country three days earlier than expected. Although, since his retirement in the Caribbean, Rubiales defends himself and offers his version of the events just a few hours before being detained by the Civil Guard and being subject to the judge’s call. From his speech, rather intelligible, with constant interruptions, few conclusions are drawn beyond the fact that the person under investigation defends and cries out for the presumption of innocence, which he says he sees threatened by the work of the media. “I don’t even have the possibility of paying for a Coca-Cola, I have all my accounts here and in Spain blocked, and without having proven anything,” says Rubiales when asked about the type of business he has gone to do there. Businesses, of supposed investments in hotels or for the construction of the same, which he does, he points out, as any other person could do them. “Does the president of the RFEF have to live in a bubble? If tomorrow you go to a country and a friend tells you: ‘here you can invest’, I don’t see the problem,” he explains.
He does these businesses with the help of his friend Nene, the former soccer player Francisco Javier Martín Alcaide. “El Nene is a boy that I have known for thirty years, a family that I love very much. “I think what is happening to him is because he is a friend of mine,” he says. Without further explanation. But the Civil Guard considers Nene a main character in the plot, with whom Rubiales would have created an entire corporate network for the diversion of money from the federation from different construction contracts awarded to the company Gruconsa, of which Ángel González is a partner. Segura, Pedro’s brother, then director of the federation’s legal services.
In the interview, Rubiales also answers questions about his relationship with Koldo, the right-hand man of former Minister José Luis Ábalos, and punctuated by an alleged bribery plot in the Ministry of Transportation. And he assures that he called him a friend because he “was an affectionate man, close in his manner, it was a way of speaking.” “We were interested in getting along with all the politicians of any party,” he adds.
“Koldo has asked us for tickets like practically all the politicians from all the national parties that are not pro-independence, with the exception of VOX, which has never asked us for tickets, we have invited them… The rest have asked us for tickets many times,” says. And he adds that Ábalos’ friend contacted him because he was also a friend of Aldama, the president of Zamora. “They asked me why the Zamora didn’t go up. Explanations were given. I have never avoided explanations.”
The interview also addresses the conflict in the federation with the women’s team and the open case, for which Rubiales will be tried, regarding the kiss to soccer player Jenni Hermoso at the World Cup celebrations last summer. Rubiales, who will be tried for sexual harassment and coercion, acknowledges that he himself went to talk to Hermoso on the plane back to Spain, something that he had not admitted until now. “I spoke with Mrs. Hermoso on the plane and I told her: they are asking us (from the Communication department) to come out and talk. She said that she had already left, that she wanted to enjoy herself, she didn’t want anything else… Perfect. If that is coercion, any conversation is coercion.”
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