Judicial battle buried in the call Brodie case, in which alleged irregularities in the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) during the presidency of Luis Rubiales are investigated. The decision of the head of the Court of First Instance and Instruction 4 of Majadahonda (Madrid), Delia Rodrigo, to expel the president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, from the case, who had been exercising the popular accusation for more than a year and a half, has caused the his quick reaction to recover his role in the investigation. The judge made this decision on April 29 after accepting the appearance in the case of the body chaired by Tebas himself as a private accusation, so she understood that he should stop exercising said function “for obvious reasons of order and procedural economy.” In his appeal, to which Morning Express has had access, the president of LaLiga considers the judge’s decision an “arbitrariness” that has left his private interests in the case “orphaned of any defense” by considering that during the investigation “there have been evidenced new evidence and indications” that he was a direct victim of the plot allegedly headed by Rubiales. Tebas concludes that “there is a more than potential risk of an accusatory vacuum in the event that LaLiga decides to abandon the accusation, or is expelled from the investigation” as has happened to him.
The loss of the status of popular accusation – which it had acquired in November 2022 – occurs just two weeks after Tebas presented an appeal in which it came out in defense of the acting president of the RFEF, Pedro Rocha, who came to testify. as a witness on April 12 and left the court as a defendant. In the 11-page letter—signed by Tebas himself in his capacity as a lawyer—the president of LaLiga stated that this accusation had not only been made irregularly, but that it was not motivated as he considered that there was no indication of criminality against Rocha: “The criminal acts under investigation involve a very small and limited group of people who were at the top of the RFEF, and who operated in coordination to avoid the knowledge and control of third parties outside the strait. circle of confidence of the president of the RFEF [Luis Rubiales]”There is no evidence in the investigation that allows us to conclude that Mr. Rocha was part of that inner circle,” he stressed to request the dismissal of the director.
That writing surprised other lawyers involved in the case, as this newspaper has confirmed, who highlighted that in a criminal procedure it is not sustainable to play the role of accusation and defense at the same time. These same sources recalled what happened in 2013 during the investigation of the Gürtel case of political corruption, when the judge of the National Court Pablo Ruz revoked the PP’s status as popular accuser that it had exercised for four years before, verifying that instead of this function, the legal representatives of the party were acting in defense of some defendants such as the former treasurer Luis Bárcenas; or his wife, Rosalía Iglesias, finally convicted. As Ruz highlighted at the time, this way of proceeding was not “congruent” with the accusation paper. Sources close to the president of LaLiga consider, however, that this case is not the same and insist that Tebas’s defense of Rocha does not represent “any contradiction” with the figure of popular accusation that he still exercised at that time. “The accusation of Rocha diverts attention from the real culprits, who are Rubiales and [Tomás] Gonzalez Cueto [el abogado que ejercía el papel de asesor jurídico externo de la federación]”, these sources highlight to explain the letter from the president of LaLiga.
Tebas’s attempts to prosecute on his own behalf in the case date back to 2022. In November of that year, the judge finally admitted his appearance with the premise that he deposited a bond of 10,000 euros in court. She then did not consider him directly affected by the facts investigated and, therefore, instead of allowing him to exercise the private accusation, she attributed the popular one to him. Rubiales’ attempts to expel him from the case were then unsuccessful and on December 2 of that year the magistrate confirmed his decision. Since then, Tebas has presented a multitude of documents requesting the carrying out of a multitude of proceedings, among them some related to the housing in Madrid that the Federation paid for Rubiales or about the supposedly private trip that he made to New York and that had allegedly been paid for. with funds from your organization.
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