The investigation into the alleged irregularities in the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) during the presidency of Luis Rubiales delves into the world of virtual currencies after the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard has located a wallet with 65,367 crypto assets or tokens USDT supposedly owned by businessman and former soccer player Francisco Javier Martín Alcaide, alias Babyfriend and partner of the former president of the federation. The head of the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 4 of Majadahonda (Madrid), Delia Rodrigo, has ordered its blocking, in addition to authorizing the agents of the armed institute to track an email address that Rubiales supposedly used and whose existence was unknown , according to several reports and judicial resolutions to which Morning Express has had access and which until now were under summary secrecy.
The new line of investigation began on March 20, the same day that the Civil Guard made the first seven arrests and searched the RFEF headquarters in what was called Operation Brodie. That day, the agents received a call from CVB, who claimed that he had made investments in crypto assets to a businessman from Granada who could allegedly be involved in the dismantled plot. He was referring to Nene, a former player who never went beyond the third step of Spanish football, became a hotel businessman after leaving the ball and who maintained a close friendship with Rubiales. In fact, he was the person who was with the former president of the federation in the Dominican Republic when those first arrests occurred.
After the investigators verified that, indeed, during the wiretaps to which the main suspects had been subjected during the previous months, a call appeared between Nene and the person who had called offering information, the agents summoned the latter to testify as a witness. . Before investigators, CV assured that, in August 2022, he helped Nené and two other people to invest a total of 60,000 euros in crypto assets. Always, according to this testimony, they tried to withdraw these funds a year later, but he convinced them to desist “since at that time they were in losses,” according to a police report dated July 11. The witness added that on March 5, two weeks before the first arrests, Nene asked him to transfer the crypto assets of the three investors to him and that he told him that his intention was to withdraw them in the Dominican Republic, where he had business. 12 days later he asked him to create a virtual wallet for him and transfer all of the funds there, which were then under his control.
The witness provided the number of the wallet where he sent the cryptocurrencies, which allowed the UCO to request the company that managed them to temporarily block them, a measure that was supported in October by Judge Rodrigo, who has transferred them to the Office. of Asset Recovery and Management (ORGA), a body created by the Ministry of Justice at the end of 2015 to manage the seizure of assets of convicted people. The Civil Guard report details that in one of the cell phones seized from Nene, they found two “seed phrases” (private keys of 12 words necessary to be able to carry out transactions from an address with crypto assets) which, according to the investigations, are linked to 140 addresses. where more funds could supposedly be hidden in virtual currencies.
In the same report, the investigators detail that, in the search they carried out in March 2024 at Rubiales’ home in Granada, they found a telephone card from the Galician company along with a note with an email address, a password and a phone number. The UCO suspects that this address was allegedly used by the former president of the Federation, so they asked the magistrate to authorize access to it “with the objective of carrying out a thorough study of the emails found” in it, as well as as the documents attached to these. Two months later they asked to extend this tracking to the remote storage service, contacts, calendar, messaging services, search history, multimedia content, locations and virtual wallets linked to it. The judge has also authorized it, but to date the result of these investigations is not known.
