The National Court closes the case on corruption in football for 22 defendants but keeps Villar indicted

The National Court judge Francisco de Jorge has agreed to the provisional dismissal of eighteen individuals and four legal entities that were under investigation in the Soule case, the case regarding alleged irregularities in the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) during the time of former president Ángel María Villar, who remains under indictment. At the same time, he has decided to divide the investigated facts relating to each of the different Football Federations into seven separate parts.

In a first ruling, the judge of the Investigating Court 1 agreed to file the proceedings against eighteen individuals and four legal entities in view of the request made by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, as their participation in the events under investigation had not been duly proven.

In a second ruling, the magistrate also agreed to the request of the Public Prosecutor and agreed to divide the proceedings. He considers it “necessary” to create separate parts to “simplify” the oral trial phase and avoid a hearing “with a complex multiplicity of different facts attributed to different authors.”

The case is thus divided into separate parts for facts relating to the Royal Spanish Football Federation, the Tenerife federation, the Cantabrian federation, the inter-island federation of Las Palmas, the Catalan federation and the Andalusian and Balearic territorial delegations of the MUPRESFE. In the first of the parts, the one relating to the Spanish Football Federation, the former president of the entity, Ángel María Villar, his son Gorka, and the former vice-president Juan Antonio Padrón, among others, are under investigation.

The court order details which individuals and legal entities are being investigated in each of the proceedings, as well as the accusing parties. The judge states that once the resolution is final, the corresponding separate proceedings will be formed, to which testimony of the entire main procedure and of the existing proceedings will be incorporated, and in them, the appropriate action will be taken.