When football, the best football, is not on the program – other, not so light, topics come to the forth. Chelsea are fighting Roman Abramovich’s lose ends, Dani Alves was released pending a final verdict, and – chaos in the Spanish Football Association. More precisely, a raid was carried out in several Spanish provinces during which agents carried out a series of searches and arrested seven people.The directive to carry out the operation came directly from the Madrid Court of First Instance, in coordination with the public prosecutor for the fight against corruption and organized crime. The target was union officials who were suspected of having participated in administrative violations, corruption, and money laundering.Last year, the Mahadajonda Court of First Instance opened an investigation into the relocation of the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia, which was approved and signed by the then president of the RFEF (Real Federacion Espanola de Futbol), Luis Rubiales, and which was mediated by the Cosmos agency owned by Barcelona legend Gerard Pique.##NAJAVA_MECA_7970160##In the meantime (in September of last year), Rubiales retired from the position of commander-in-chief in the federation, after the scandal with women’s national team player Jenni Hermoso, and he was also banned from football activities for three years. Of course, this does not absolve him from responsibility for the moves he made in the past, and therefore his house in Granada was also under attack. Civil Guard agents were looking for documents and contracts suspected of being the subject of fraud.Rubiales is currently outside of Spain, and let’s recall that the 47-year-old football worker was under fire from the public a little less than a year ago because of the aforementioned move of the Super Cup to Riyadh and Jeddah, from which as much as 40,000,000 euros of Saudi capital was secured.In a significant development in Spain, police have conducted raids on the offices of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and various other properties, resulting in seven arrests. These actions are part of an investigation into suspected corruption and money laundering linked… pic.twitter.com/fabXZDTUiR— Capology (@CapologyDB) March 21, 2024 “We had offers from other destinations as well, such as China, Qatar, and Africa. In each of those options, the people from “Cosmos” were told that they would not have economic relations with the Spain FA. We have never, nor will we ever pay anyone a single euro. And we received 40,000,000 euros for Spanish football. The proposal to move the Super Cup to Saudi Arabia had no vote against,” said Rubiales in April of last year.At the same time, Gerard Pique assured that there is nothing disputed in the commission of 4,000,000 euros per season that his company Cosmos secured for itself for intermediary services.
