The cashball case, about alleged active corruption in the sport, begins this Tuesday to be tried in the Leiria court, after the Porto court deems itself “incompetent by territory”, according to the order consulted by the Lusa agency .
The Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) charged Paulo Silva, João Gonçalves and Gonçalo Rodrigues with crimes of active corruption, involving two handball referees from Leiria, whose trial begins at 2 p.m. on Tuesday.
“It seems that the municipality of Pombal is located in the area of territorial jurisdiction of the Judicial Court of the District of Leiria” and it is the place “where the most serious crime was committed”, and thus “competent to judge all crimes that determine the connection”, justifies the court of Porto in the above-mentioned document.
According to the MP’s message to which Lusa had access, the cashball process began with a complaint to Porto’s Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DIAP), when sports entrepreneur Paulo Silva reported in March 2018 that he had been approached by the football agent’s friend – João Geraldes – so that, together with the referees appointed for handball matches in the national championship, he preferred Sporting.
The judges in question are Ivan Caçador and Roberto Martins, who belong to the Leiria Handball Association and who, according to the MP, have not been proven to have accepted the alleged bribe.
In this trial, the defendant Paulo Silva is charged with three crimes of active corruption, two of which are in the aggravated form involving sports referees Roberto Martins and Ivan Caçador, which will have taken place in Pombal.
João Gonçalves, football manager, and Gonçalo Rodrigues, former Sporting employee, are also responsible for committing a crime of aggravated active corruption in relation to Ivan Caçador.
The MP reports that at the end of the 2016/17 season, the defendant Paulo Silva stated that he proposed to hand over the amount of 2,500 euros to Roberto Martins and 2,000 to Ivan Caçador in order to represent Sporting’s interests.
“More he stated that he was not sure that Roberto Martins had accepted the proposal he had sent and that Ivan Caçador had accepted his proposal. These arbitrators, when questioned as defendants, confirmed the approach, but denied that they had accepted to act as requested. Since no other evidence is available, it is insufficient to indicate that they accepted the proposal made to them by the accused Paulo Silva.”refers to the order.
The instruction decision further contributes to this “Between January 2017 and September 2017, the defendants devised a plan according to which they would intervene with the referees appointed for the aforementioned handball championships, in which Sporting participated, so that it would be unfairly favored in the application of technical and disciplinary rules”.
In exchange for money, João Gonçalves and Paulo Silva would also have another plan to do the same favor with footballers from the First League and the Portuguese Cup.
The instructional decision details several incidents indicating attempts to corrupt players and referees, which will now be judged, in a case dating back to 2018, which led to searches in the leonine SAD.
The trial included other defendants, including André Geraldes, Sporting’s sporting director at the time, but neither Varzim’s current director nor the Leonine club were charged.
In addition to the applicable criminal law framework, João Gonçalves may see the additional penalty of being banned from exercising an activity as a sports entrepreneur applied to him, whereby they could lose all three “benefits related to the crimes”.
The defendants were charged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but asked for an investigation to be opened, an optional phase that aims to decide by an examining magistrate whether the trial will continue and in what ways for trial.
Source: DN
