Seven years later, the Soule case, which is investigating alleged irregularities in the management of Ángel María Villar at the head of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, is beginning to unravel. The National Court judge Francisco de Jorge issued two orders on Monday in which he maintains Villar himself, his son Gorka, and the former economic vice president and right-hand man of the Basque leader, the Tenerife native Juan Padrón, as suspects. The three were imprisoned at the time by Judge Santiago Pedraz as members of an alleged patronage network in which alleged preferential treatment in private businesses reverted to Villar in the form of votes.
The magistrate has closed the case against 18 of the accused, including five presidents of territorial associations, four of whom are still in office. Jacinto Andrés Alonso (La Rioja), Vicente Muñoz (Valencia), Antonio García Gaona (Ceuta), Diego Martínez (Melilla) and José Miguel Monje (Murcia) were part of the clientelist network that, according to Judge Pedraz, Villar wove during his mandate.
Jacinto Andrés Alonso was a Helvetia insurance broker and, according to the summary of the case, he sold almost two million euros to the RFEF and related entities, which in 2015 allowed him to earn 134,000 euros, more than double what he earned in 2009. Jacinto Alonso placed a cousin in the Footballers’ Mutual Association at the expense of another worker. Antonio García was the administrator of the Trujillo travel agency. Between 2009 and 2015 he billed the Mutual Association and the Federation more than 700,000 euros. In the case of Diego Martínez, Villar was charged with payments to his son, who would have benefited with more than 100,000 euros between 2012 and 2016 also based on an apparent contracting of computer services agreed in the central offices of the Mupresfe (mutual association).
Between 2009 and 2015, José Miguel Monje received income of 24,000 euros a year from the Policlínica Murciana de Fútbol, which is 100% owned by the aforementioned federation. Vicente Muñoz, the only one of the quintet of barons who is no longer in business, invoiced the Federation with Viajes Vacança and the Mutualidad. Between 2009 and 2015, he received more than two million euros from both entities, which represented 80% of his total annual business. In a recorded conversation that is included in the summary, Muñoz proposed to Villar, and Villar admitted it, to change the ownership of the agency to continue invoicing without violating the new ethical code of the Federation that the Basque leader put in place when he became aware that this type of favours could bring him problems with the law. In a statement before Judge Pedraz in January 2019, Villar distanced himself from some of these contracts, claiming that they were not part of his duties, but rather those of the general secretary.
Judge Francisco de Jorge has found no evidence of a crime in the actions of the five barons, something that was suspected from the beginning. More than criminal activities per se, what was questioned was the ethics of favouring the business of presidents of territorial bodies who are decisive when it comes to choosing the president of Spanish football due to the control they have over the rest of the assembly members who vote.
The judge, as requested by the Prosecutor’s Office, proceeded to divide the procedure into seven separate parts, since “it is necessary to adequately prepare the trial by dividing the case by facts and defendants in order to simplify the prosecution, avoiding a trial with a complex multiplicity of differentiated facts and attributed to different authors.” The case is divided into separate parts by facts related to the RFEF, the Tenerife Federation, the Cantabrian Federation, whose president José Ángel Peláez is still active, the Inter-island Federation of Las Palmas, the Catalan Federation and the Andalusian and Balearic delegations of the Mupresfe. Documentation related to the investigation of the case was stolen from the Catalan Federation in January 2024.
Countdown for Rocha
Pedro Rocha has requested precautionary measures against the two-year ban imposed on him by the Administrative Court of Sport last July for overstepping his functions as president of the management committee. Rocha fired the federation’s general secretary, Andreu Camps, on his own initiative, without consulting the other members of the aforementioned management committee, as established by law. Once the period requested by the State attorney to present the allegations opposing the granting of precautionary measures has ended, the judge can now decide whether to grant or deny them. If the latter happens, Rocha will cease to preside over Spanish football.
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