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The confession of a former Zaragoza player to Javier Tebas has ended up sitting on the bench 36 players, a coach and four former managers for allegedly having rigged the Levante-Zaragoza match of the last day of the 2010/11 League that guaranteed continuity of the Aragonese team in the First Division. All are accused of a crime of sports fraud and face a request for sentences of up to four years in prison, six disqualification for all sports and a fine of 3.4 million each. In the case of former managers, headed by Agapito Iglesias, the crime of falsehood is added to a commercial document .

This trial has left several unknowns that Judge Manuel Aleis will have to clear in a sentence that he hopes to issue before the end of 2019 and that will be a before and after in the persecution of the amaños to be the first to come to trial with a characteristic differentiator: there are no betting mafias involved but it is an alleged adulteration of the competition for sports reasons, in this case, ensure permanence in First.

The first thing that the judge will have to solve is if Javier Tebas was accredited to file the complaint that gave rise to the process. The defendants' defenses have tried to convince that the current president of the LFP committed a crime of revealing professional secrecy by denouncing the fraud confessed to him by a former client player of his law firm. The mysterious player could also be sitting on the bench, but Thebes in his statement refused to confirm it and also to reveal his identity.

Clarified this issue, the judge must rule on the accusation of the Prosecutor, LaLiga and Deportivo de la Coruña who have maintained during all cases that Real Zaragoza used 1.7 million euros to bribe the players of the Levant, which in that Nothing was played last season and in which the Aragonese club won a victory that allowed him to continue in the First Division.

That amount, 765,000 euros in cash and 965,000 in transfers to nine players, the coach and the sports director, left a Zaragoza on the edge of the creditors' contest is something that has been noted in the trial. The contradictions come with respect to destiny. While Agapito Iglesias and the rest of the former executives accused claim that they are premiums and that it was customary to pay them in cash or by transfer, the players deny having received money in hand and ensure that the transfer was returned to the club at the request of the then president. Only two admitted to having it.

These payments were, according to the accusations, camouflaged in a receipt signed by Captain Gabi and with payrolls that, despite being validated by the bankruptcy administration, the Prosecutor's Office defends that they are false.

The thesis defended by the Public Ministry, LaLiga and Deportivo is that these missing amounts ended up in the hands of the Levante players in exchange for losing the 1-2 game. The employer of professional football is based, in addition to the denunciation of its president, in a statistical study carried out that uncovers an unusual behavior of the two teams with respect to both their numbers that season and that of other teams in similar circumstances.

The Prosecutor's Office has a report from the Tax Agency that reveals the limited movement in the accounts of Levante players summoned in that game during the subsequent summer. All of them have denied receiving the bribe from Zaragoza and the arguments to justify the cessation of their banking movements have been very diverse: from wedding gifts, revenues for renting a home to a summer resort at the expense of parents or in-laws.

It is up to the judge now to assess whether the adjustment is accredited, the transfer of money from Zaragoza to the Levant and if the leaders and players committed any irregularity in a transit of funds that the only indisputable thing is that they disappeared from the club's accounts.

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  • Real Zaragoza
  • Javier Thebes
  • Deportivo de la Coruña
  • sports
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