Luis Rubiales, free pending summons after his arrest at the airport

Photo Credit To Agencia EFE

The former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) Luis Rubiales was arrested and shortly after released this Wednesday at the Barajas airport after bringing forward his return to Spain from the Dominican Republic, with what is now waiting to be cited by the judge investigating him.

There was much expectation for his arrival, although two days before the agents of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, in collaboration with the Dominican security forces, had searched his offices in Punta Cana and had taken documents and devices. electronics.

A judge from Majadahonda (Madrid) investigates contracts, possibly irregular, from the last five years of Rubiales as head of the RFEF, in investigations for which he was included in the list of arrests that the UCO was going to carry out and carried out in the past March 20, although it was already known that the former president was not in Spain.

Yesterday, after eleven in the morning, the plane in which he was traveling landed at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport and the agents took him to the Civil Guard facilities at the aerodrome, identified him, seized his mobile devices and took him statement, as the judge had requested.

Now it will be the one who decides when to summon the former president of the RFEF, whose desire, according to defense sources, was to return as soon as possible and appear in court.

But before he had already defended himself. In an interview with La Sexta, Rubiales denied having received bribes and said that his money is the product of his work and his savings.

“I am here to say that it is a lie that I have paid a bribe with apartments and a baseball team here (in the Dominican Republic). “They have said that I have a baseball team, I don’t know if with the intention of saying that I was diverting money in some way,” he noted.

“It is a lie that he hit a ball in Cape Verde. It is a lie that I have land for the construction of hotels in Saudi Arabia. All that has been said. I don’t know what the judge says, what the UCO has investigated, because I don’t know if it has a direct relationship, I hope not, with leaks, with some statements that the media have made,” she added.

Payments to a company of his friend Nene

Meanwhile, and after the secrecy of the summary was lifted, some details of the investigation have become known.

Thus, according to a document in the summary, the UCO suspects that the RFEF, during the time of Luis Rubiales as president, would have hired the construction company Gruconsa for the Federation’s works in exchange for it making payments to an administered company. by his friend Francisco Javier Martín, known as Nene.

Rubiales and Martín, according to that letter, “intend to continue receiving benefits, apparently not justified at present, from the new projects achieved by Gruconsa, which are directly or indirectly linked to the RFEF.” In fact, the UCO cites a project by this construction company in Saudi Arabia.

This company was chosen to carry out the remodeling works at the La Cartuja Stadium, in Seville, to host Euro 2020 matches and the Copa del Rey finals from that year to 2024; some contracts that are also the subject of this investigation, directed by the investigating court number 4 of Majadahonda (Madrid).

The UCO estimates that between 2019 and 2023 Gruconsa invoiced 3.8 million euros to the RFEF and the public company Estadio Cartuja in Seville.

Two safes with 318 thousand euros in Nene’s hotel

It has also been learned that Nene kept 318,350 euros in two safes at the hotel establishment he owns in Granada, the Hotel Urban Dream Granada, in addition to another 5,000 euros that were found at his home, also located in that Andalusian town.

This is stated in the report from the registry of the offices of said hotel, to which EFE has had access, and which the UCO carried out on March 20.

As administrator of the establishment, which is also the headquarters of Explotaciones Hoteleras Nazaríes SL and Dismatec Sport SL, Nene appears, although only his wife, Purificación Rufino Domínguez, who was arrested in this operation, was present at the search.

In one of the two offices “used for the administration of the hotel complex”, one located on the ground floor and the other on the first floor of the property, two safes were found built into a closet to which the keys were not found, “ Therefore, the use of force to open is essential,” says the Civil Guard.

In one of them, 70 thousand euros were seized and in the other 248 thousand 350, of which there were 10 thousand in 50 bills inside an envelope in which “For Javier” was handwritten.

Of the total seized, 224,850 euros were in 50 euro bills, 20,000 in 200 bills, 2,000 in 20 bills, 1,000 in 10 bills, and 500 in 5 euro bills.