Spanish court has issued a summons for the former director of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Luis Rubiales, on April 29, on suspicion of corruption.
Rubiales was briefly arrested last week at Madrid-Barajas airport as part of this investigation which relates in particular to the contract to relocate the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia.
“On Monday 29 April at 10:00 a.m. (0800 GMT), the court has summoned Luis Rubiales to testify as a person under investigation,” the Madrid court said in a statement.
Rubiales, who was returning from the Dominican Republic at that time, had received information about his indictment.
The charges against him included money laundering, commercial corruption, unfair administration, and membership in a criminal organisation.
This case concerns irregularities in the contracts signed by the RFEF over the last five years, and gave rise to numerous searches. At the heart of the investigations, the lucrative contract concluded to relocate the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia.
Since 2020, the Saudi kingdom has hosted the semi-finals and the final of this competition for some 40 million euros per year, following an agreement in which the Kosmos company of former FC Barcelona defender Gerard Pique served of intermediary.
In 2022, recordings of conversations between Rubiales and Pique were published by the press in which the two men were heard talking about commissions of several million euros.
Rubiales, maintained the legality of a deal to hold the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia. He insisted that the federation did not pay any commission for the agreement.
Pique, whose company was involved in the deal, also insisted on its legitimacy and expressed his pride in it.
The investigators, however, asked the principality of Andorra to have access to the accounts linked to Pique, who owns a club in this micro-state, via a rogatory commission.
During searches carried out at the end of March in this case, seven people were arrested.
