Former Spanish FA boss Luis Rubiales has been detained by Spanish authorities to face corruption questions while at risk of jail over World Cup kiss-gate
Detectives detained him as he stepped off an Air Europa flight from the Dominican Republic which landed at Madrid’s Barajas Airport just after 10.30am local time today, April 3.
Rubiales was placed in the custody of the Civil Guard as soon as he got off the plane and was escorted into a police van and taken to their headquarters in Tres Cantos.
He will taken to a police station where he is expected to be formally read his rights and handed a court summons as part of an ongoing corruption probe linked to his time as head of the Spanish FA and focusing on business deals thought to include one to hold the Spanish Super Cup in Saudi Arabia.
A judge is expected to question him in a closed court hearing in the coming days before being released on bail pending an ongoing probe.
The investigation, led by a judge based in Majadahonda on the outskirts of Madrid, is unrelated to the separate ‘Kissgate’ probe.
Last month public prosecutors involved in that case said they were seeking a two-and-a-half year prison sentence over the ‘unwanted’ kiss Rubiales gave footballer Jenni Hermoso following the Spain’s World Cup women’s team’s finals victory over England last August.
They said in an indictment sent to Madrid-based judge Francisco de Jorge they wanted him jailed for a year if he was found guilty at trial of sexual assault and another one and a half years for coercion linked to his alleged attempts to get the footballer to speak out in his defence following his World Cup kiss.
Around the same time Spanish public prosecutors asked for Rubiales to be arrested over alleged financial irregularities while he was in charge of the Spanish FA.
Rubiales’ home in the southern Spanish city of Granada was one of several properties searched on March 20 but he was already in the Caribbean.
Rubiales had already said he would return to Spain and insisted it would be on April 6 but overnight it emerged he had changed his travel plans.
He is thought to have avoided an embarrassing arrest, and a photo of him in handcuffs, after confirming his voluntary return ahead of and after a Spanish police operation in the Dominican Republic on Monday with assistance from local officers.
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He rescheduled his return to Madrid after Spanish police investigators flew to the Caribbean and confiscated his phone and a laptop during a reported search of the property he has been staying at on the Caribbean island.
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Rubiales has denied any wrongdoing in both the ongoing corruption probe and the ‘Kissgate’ case.
In a TV interview with Spanish journalist Ana Pastor, set to be screened tonight on La Sexta, he will deny allegations he embezzled millions of pounds from the Spanish FA and insist: ‘My money is the product of my work and my savings.’
He is also expected to accuse the judge who charged him with coercion and sexual assault over his ‘unwanted’ Jenni Hermoso kiss of manipulation by saying: ‘I think his way of describing my words is manipulative.’
