The Catalan Football Federation (FCF) announced this Thursday that on December 31 it suffered the theft of confidential documentation linked to the 'Soule case', the judicial operation that investigates federative corruption plots and that led to the fall of the former president of the Federation in 2017. Spanish Federation (RFEF), Ángel María Villar, of the position. The Catalan entity assures that the thieves knew “perfectly” the facilities and the “layout of the offices and who works in them.” The Mossos d'Esquadra have opened an investigation.
The assault occurred on New Year's Eve and was carried out using the button method to access the headquarters, on the second floor of the building located on Sicilia Street in Barcelona. The thieves made a hole in the wall, cut off the electricity supply and prevented the alarm from working normally. Once inside, they searched the furniture in the Presidency, General Management and Accounting areas; and they also removed the Competition office, which until recently was the office of the former head of Administration, who retired less than a year ago. “All this indicates that they knew who worked in each space,” FCF sources insist. Now a safe and documentation of the 'Soule case' are missing. The criminal action went unnoticed until day 2, when the building's janitor saw the damage and raised the alarm. The damage prevented the usual daily activity from being carried out, although the reason given by the federation was initially “an electrical incident.”
The theft of the documents takes on special relevance because the general director of the FCF, José Miguel Calle, had been compiling for a few weeks at the request of the National Court information about the works that the entity carried out at the federal headquarters of Cornellà, one of the Issues investigated for alleged diversion of funds between the Spanish and Catalan federations during the mandate of Andreu Subies at the head of the Catalan organization (2011-2018), coinciding with that of Villar in the national federation (1988-2017). “The thieves did not take other valuable items such as computers or televisions, but rather the safe and these documents,” FCF sources emphasize. The entity, in any case, emphasizes that there are copies of all the content. “Everything can be handed over to the investigating judge.”
The Soule case is a macro judicial operation that began in 2016 in which it focused on the alleged favorable treatments that Villar made to territorial leaders to guarantee his continuity in office. The former president of the federation and his son were arrested in 2017; and Subies, then economic vice president of the RFEF, in 2018, along with the former director of the Catalan, José Contreras Arjona, a businessman and close friend of Villar, who died in December 2022.
Among other alleged benefits, the judge investigated the awarding of some works to Contreras through companies that operated within the Catalan federation and that, in addition, were financed indirectly by the Spanish federation run by Villar. An anonymous complaint that reached the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office a few days after Villar's arrest, pointed out alleged cost overruns in the remodeling works carried out in 2014 at the FCF headquarters, now attacked. According to the complaint, those renovation works were awarded to the real estate company Tastavins, owned by businessman José Contreras, for an amount of 518,702 euros. That amount was paid by the RFEF then headed by Villar; and Tastavins subcontracted the work to a construction company for less than half that amount (239,000 euros). The rest of the amount paid was supposedly diverted to pay for other jobs, such as a restaurant in Cambrils (Tarragona) in which Subies' wife appears as administrator.
Villar was dismissed in December 2017 from the presidency of the RFEF by the Sports Administrative Court; and Subies resigned from the vice presidency in March 2019, despite having initially obtained the support of Luis Rubiales, Villar's successor in the federation position.
There seems to be no way to find peace in the Catalan federation. The entity had to repeat in February 2023 the elections held months before, in May 2022, due to “irregularities” in several points of the vote, as ruled by the Catalan Sports Court (TCE, for its acronym in Catalan), in which which was won again by Joan Soteras, who in turn succeeded Subies. The current president has had to defend himself during his mandate from accusations that he had hired family members for some activities; and having illegally consulted the emails of the entity's former head of purchasing and the former director of legal services.
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