Judge Carmen Lamela even refused on three occasions to hand over to the defense of the ex-president of Barcelona Football Club Sandro Rosell the documents of the international rogatory commission of the New York prosecutor's office that was at the origin of the case which would lead the ex-president of Barça to spend two years in pre-trial detention in order to end up being acquitted. And she wasn't the one who handed it in, but her substitute in court number 3 of the National Court, when the room judging Rosell asked for it at the beginning of the hearing.
This Rogatory reached the court on June 5, 2015 through the Ministry of Justice, although the letter from the New York prosecutors on which it was based had been drafted for several weeks. From there, he formally started the case, at least with regard to the legal case. The request for judicial cooperation from the New York prosecutor's office referred to three people: Rosell and two other executives from the world of football linked to the International Football Federation (FIFA) and the awarding of the organization of the World Cup in Qatar from 2022, as well as the sale of the television and sports rights of the selections of the American continent.
The Manhattan prosecutor's office was investigating the payment of bribes to FIFA members to secure votes in favor of Qatar to host the World Cup, as well as the payment of illegal commissions by private companies to managers of national federations to obtain television rights for the various national teams american Regarding those crimes, the New York prosecutor supported the possible existence of crimes of organized crime, money laundering and electronic fraud, among others.
In the case of Rosell, the rogatory stated that "in light of the evidence that he received improper payments and of the movement of his account in the US to his account in Spain, the United States authorities believe that the bank records they request will demonstrate the "existence of deposits of illicit profits in that account, or of the laundering of those profits of the crime".
However, it was only asking for information about their account movements, without additional measures such as freezing funds. Something that he did with the other two, the Nicaraguan Julio Rocha and the Venezuelan Rafael Esquivel, the latter with a diplomatic passport from that country and also a Spanish one. For them it claimed to “confiscate, restrict or otherwise disable all funds, including accrued interest”.
This was the starting point of the case against Rosell. The prosecutors tasked the 3rd group of the famous Central Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) to analyze the banking movements of the Catalan businessman. Based on that assignment, several reports were drawn up on which prosecutors Vicente González Mota and Daniel Campos based the complaint against the businessman presented in March 2017.
In that document there was no reference to the Rogatory Commission or to the possible operation linked to the purchase of votes for Qatar to win the 2022 World Cup, as in the Rogatory; yes crimes that had been included in it, such as money laundering. And he was only talking about Rosell's operations with Ricardo Terra Teixeira, former president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF).
Two months after the complaint was filed, Rosell was arrested on May 23 by order of Judge Lamela. A week later, she lifted the secrecy of the case summary, with which Rosell then learned that he had been secretly investigated for more than a year and a half. First, for the rogatory; then by the UDEF and the prosecutors.
He remained in prison until February 27, 2019, when the courtroom that was trying him released him. In those almost two years in prison, there were only two procedural acts in the case, the two orders for his defense. None for the prosecution or the judge.
However, long before the complaint was filed, on December 17, 2015, the court received a new brief from the New York prosecutor's office that was contemporaneous with the first. It had been formalized on May 20, 2015. It was the formal indictment of the New York Prosecutor's Office before the District Court of the city. The first of the Fifagate case. And in it, the two Latin American managers who appeared in the rogatory commission that originated the case, Rocha and Esquivel, appeared as defendants, among others, but nothing about Rosell.
In May, months before the arrival of Lamela's brief in court, the New York prosecutor's office already made public that list of defendants. But as in Spain everything was secret, no one knew that Rosell was being investigated. Does this explain the refusal of Lamela and the prosecution to reveal the content of the rogatory which claimed up to three times the defense of the entrepreneur?
Since the first communication in December 2015, the New York prosecutor's office sent other documents: it included a second delivery, in this case it included the Spanish Gerard Romy, executive of Mediapro and responsible for that company's business in the US, for whom they demanded a search of their offices in Barcelona and Madrid. He is currently awaiting trial after being indicted by New York prosecutors in March 2020.
But there was never a single reference to Rosell again. Despite this, the UDEF, the prosecution and the judge continued to advance in the case against the Catalan executive, who knew nothing of what was happening. The aforementioned police unit presented its first report on its economic activities in February 2016, two months after the New York prosecutor's office had made it clear that until now it was not suing the Spaniard.
