Police have arrested Spanish Football Federation president Angel Maria Villar, his son and three more federation executives as part of an anti-corruption probe.
Spain’s Guardia Civil said in a statement that Villar, his son Gorka Villar and three other officials were detained when raids were carried out at the federation headquarters in Madrid.
Villar is also a senior vice president of Fifa and Uefa.
Villar, centre, is senior vice president of Fifa and Uefa (Mike Egerton/EMPICS)
Police said the other three men who were arrested were Juan Padron, federation vice president of economic affairs, and the president and the secretary of the regional federation for Tenerife.
Officers said the five men were arrested on charges of corruption as part of a probe into the finances of the federations.
Spain’s minister of education, culture and sport, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, told national television moments after the raids: “In Spain the laws are enforced, the laws are the same for all, and nobody, nobody is above the law.”
Uefa said in a statement it “is aware of the reports. We have no comment to make at this time”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel