There was no surprise and former Real Madrid basketball player Marcus Slaughter did not appear at trial for the falsification of his passport. His chair was left empty and his performance will be judged separately in another proceeding if he ever appears. For the moment, everything related to his performance was put on hold and Slaughter’s name was prohibited from being uttered during the entire session. Every time someone referred to the former Real Madrid center, the judge appeared to block any mention. “This is inappropriate and impertinent.”
The one that did appear was FC Barcelona through its lawyer Jordi Pina, who tightened the screws on the accused to prove the existence of an alleged agreement between the player’s agent, Julián Aranda, Hugo López, coach who worked in Equatorial Guinea, and a former Real Madrid youth player, Richard Nguema, to obtain an Equatoguinean passport for Slaughter and Andy Panko, then a Fuenlabrada player. If the ruling determines the existence of this agreement to falsify the credential, Barça will activate the administrative procedure to challenge the matches it lost against Madrid due to Slaughter’s improper alignment and will demand the withdrawal of the Copa del Rey and the Copa del Rey titles. League.
The naturalization of players was common in the ACB in 2015 based on the agreement Cotonou that equated certain countries as communitarian. In this case, however, the preparation of the passport was so botched that alarms went off. Panko and Slaughter had the same number. “They were both counterfeit. It was a manipulation on an authentic medium,” said the technical head of the documentary falsification unit of the National Police.
The four defendants, who face two and a half years in prison, tried to downplay the benefit they obtained with the passports. The first was Andy Panko, who via videoconference from his home in the United States assured that “he thought everything was legal from minute one” even though he paid $30,000 for the document. He said he interpreted the payment as an investment to create a basketball school in Equatorial Guinea in the future and fulfill his dream of playing for a national team, in this case Guinea. Unlike Slaughter, Panko claimed that he did not use his passport and the truth is that he did not play in any match as an Equatorial Guinean but because he was caught before. When he presented the credential “the Federation’s computer system jumped” indicating that “there was already a passport with that number that corresponded to Slaughter,” explained a senior Federation official.
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Hugo López, who in 2015 coached the Malabo Kings of Equatorial Guinea, also ignored the matter. He said that he limited himself to informing Panko of the possibility of becoming an Equatoguinean national, although he denied having offered him anything. López did acknowledge having provided the player’s agent with contact with Richard Nguema, who was his player and “son of a Guinean minister.” A WhatsApp message written by López doubts that he did not know that the matter was shady. “I don’t want to know more,” he wrote to the players’ agent. Yesterday, he justified that “in administrative matters it doesn’t matter at all.”
Julián Aranda, the players’ agent, did not intervene, he said, in obtaining the documents. He limited himself to putting Panko in contact with Nguema and thought that everything was of “maximum reliability.” Nor did he suspect that a passport would cost $30,000. “They used the money to promote basketball in their country,” he alleged and insisted that he did not gain anything from the naturalization of his players. “I was neither leaving nor coming.” The attentive lawyer of the ACB caught the rebound and managed to get Alfonso Reyes, former player and now president of the union, to recognize that an agent receives his remuneration from the player’s salary. Therefore, the agent did gain with the naturalization of Panko, who was 37 years old and who was looking for options to remain in the ACB thanks to his community passport. The proof is that after his passport was rejected he did not sign for anyone and left Spain. The last to testify was Nguema, who pointed to the Malabo Kings delegate as being responsible for acquiring the passports. Nguema admitted to having collected 32,000 euros from Slaughter but before he gave more details, the judge cut him off. “Not applicable.”
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