Esteban Urreiztieta Madrid
Madrid
Updated Wednesday, March 27, 2024-13:21
The Court of Instruction number 5 of
Huesca
has archived the so-called
Oikos case
, which was born as one of the major operations against corruption in Spanish football, considering that match-fixing has not been proven. The judge makes the decision after five years of investigations and after carrying out the arrest of players such as
Borja Fernández
, who was active at the time in
Real Valladolid
, or former footballers such as
Carlos Aranda
or
Raúl Bravo
, whom the Police considered the ringleaders of a plot to fix matches and profit from illegal bets.
Magistrate
Alicia Bustillo
has agreed to the file after requesting it from the Prosecutor's Office and the defense and demolishes the investigations of the Judicial Police, which, as she recalls in her order, warned of the existence of "an alleged criminal organization dedicated to fixing soccer matches for obtain
an illicit benefit through sports betting on those previously agreed upon results
." In this way, the judge ruled out that Aranda and Bravo were responsible for the plot and that other footballers such as
Íñigo López
or
Samuel Sáiz
depended on them , to whom the investigators attributed the responsibility of "contacting the teams."
Among the matches investigated, the most relevant was, without a doubt, the one played by
Real Valladolid
against
Valencia
on May 18, 2019 and which the Ché team ended up winning 0-2. The Police maintained that the plot tried to buy the match to make a combined bet. However, the judge considers that the evidence of the party's purchase is "absolutely insufficient."
In this meeting the Police focused on Borja Fernández, "second captain of Valladolid and one of the corrupt objectives according to the reports." The latter always denied that Raúl Bravo had met him to fix the meeting but to "ask him about job options." The evidence about Fernández already declined in September 2020, when he was acquitted.