The scandal surrounding RFEF President Luis Rubiales, now suspended for 90 fays by FIFA, continues to grind forward.
On Wednesday, it was revealed that Spain forward Jenni Hermoso had made a statement to the police following the non-consensual kiss given by Rubiales, and would be pressing charges against him for it.
Rubiales’ behaviour went from pressuring Hermoso to feature in a video statement after the event, to releasing fake comments on her behalf, to now accusing of her of lying about the events.
The legal case against Rubiales will halt the sporting sanctions that could come to Rubiales, with the Ministry for Sport, represented by the High Council for Sport, pursuing a suspension of up to two years. However El Mundo have revealed that the CSD dismissed a case against Rubiales less than two years previously for ‘abuses of power’.
Their reporting claims that some of the subordinates to then Head of the CSD, Jose Manuel Franco, took the case to the Tribunal for Sport, accusing him of serious infractions.
The issue revolved around the TV rights for the women’s game, where Rubiales allegedly tried to change the destination of the rights in order to benefit himself. Allegedly he also withheld public from certain teams as a manner of pressuring teams, in order to get them to accept. This was considered by other members of the CSD to be endangering the integrity of the competition too.
Ultimately, Franco ended up dismissing the case in December of 2021, putting the infractions down to ‘legal discrepancies’. The reason Franco did this, according to the paper, was to ‘maintain the balance of Spanish football’. They posit that those in Government did not want to remove or suspend Rubiales at the risk of handing over all of the power in Spanish football to La Liga President Javier Tebas.
Since, Franco has left that position and now Victor Francos is pursuing a suspension Rubiales following the kiss scandal. Rubiales has so far refused to resign, at the request of the RFEF, but both the Federation and the CSD will now be sidelined until the case of sexual assault or sexual harassment is resolved.
