Rui Costa will be a defendant as president of Benfica’s SAD SAD due to a transfer of about 76,000 euros from Lokomotiv Moscow to the incarnated bank accounts, advances to TVI/CNN Portugal.
At issue is the payment of part of a debt related to the Argentine Central Defense German Conti.
This financial operation violated European legislation on sanctions applied to various entities and people who support Russian interests.
Rui Costa should have been questioned in July, but requested the postponement of the interrogation. At the time, he presented himself with two lawyers at the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP) in Lisbon, after being notified to be questioned and constituted defendant with the lighter coercion measure, the Identity and Residence Term. The same was applied to the former executive administrator and vice president of SAD, Luís Mendes.
Already in Dciap, the former Portuguese international invoked that on that day there was a plenary meeting with Benfica’s social bodies and requested that the diligence be postponed committing to deliver the said justification, which it will have done. However, it has not yet been notified again by the inquiry prosecutor, Filipa Rosado, said TVI/CNN Portugal, which cites an official source representing Benfica SAD and its president.
Suspected the violation of restrictive measures approved by the United Nations and/or the European Union, the Public Prosecution Service (MP) brings together the suspicion of capital laundering crime, although the money in question has followed directly from Benfica’s Russian club account in BCP, without any intermediate or concealment.
By order of Dciap, the money was referred to origin, that is, to the lokomotiv accounts on the bank to Raiffeisenbank, Russia.
The payment in question refers to the first debt titch that Lokomotiv that would have due to the transfer of Conti, transferred in January 2023, by 300 thousand euros, from Benfica to the Moscovita emblem, whose designated SAD Joint Stock Company Football Club Lokomotiv is arrested indirectly by the state of the Russian Federation through the public company Transtelecom Company, Bank, Banco which has the Marathon Group as their own, controlled by another Russian whose name also appears on the list of international sanctions, Alexander Vinokurov.
The case has been being investigated in DCIAP since last year, and the MP will intend to propose the provisional suspension of the process by paying a fine.
Infringement of international restrictive measures may be punished with a prison sentence of one to five years in Portugal, but in case of mere negligence, the law establishes a fine of up to 600 days.