Spain’s top football official arrested in fraud investigation
Police raided the headquarters of Spain’s football federation yesterday and arrested its president, Angel Maria Villar, as part of an anti-corruption investigation.
A judicial source said Mr Villar, 67, a senior vice-president of Fifa, the world football governing body, was being held on suspicion of abusing his position to embezzle funds from the national federation, among other charges.
Mr Villar’s son, Gorka, and another senior federation official were also detained in the investigation, which focuses on allegations of skimming profits from international matches.
Fifa declined to comment on the arrest, saying it was an internal matter for the Spanish football association.
Spain’s political and financial crimes court said it was directing the investigation into allegations of “collusion, fraud, embezzlement and presumed forgery”.
Police who carried out raids on the federation headquarters and other sites said Mr Villar is suspected of organising international football matches as part of a scheme to embezzle funds for the benefit of his son.
Commenting on the arrest, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, a spokesman for the Spanish government, said: “No one is untouchable and everyone must obey the law.”
Mr Villar, a former acting president and the current vice president of Uefa, which runs European football, has headed the Spanish federation since 1988.
He was re-elected unopposed for an eighth term in May despite allegations of vote-rigging that cast a shadow over his election.
His son is a former director general of Conmebol, the South American football confederation, a post he left in July last year. He also served on a Fifa advisory panel aimed at reforming the organisation, which is mired in corruption allegations.
His father has overseen a successful period in the Spanish national team’s history as they won three back-to-back major tournaments, triumphing at Euro 2008 and 2012 and in between notching up Spain’s first World Cup win in South Africa in 2010.
Mr Villar senior’s critics say his time in charge has been undermined by ethical questions and an autocratic style.
Javier Tebas, head of the Spanish league, has had a long-running feud with Mr Villar. Former Athletic Bilbao midfielder Mr Villar was capped 22 times for Spain, but ethical questions have dogged him for years.
Most notably he was fined 25,000 Swiss francs (Dh96,212) by Fifa’s ethics committee in 2015 for failing to co-operate with an investigation into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, to Russia and Qatar respectively.