The Spanish first division club Osasuna fixed football matches in an attempt to avoid relegation over two seasons, a court heard on Tuesday.
A former club secretary said that the club had paid Getafe and Real Betis to lose against them in 2012-13 and 2013-14 respectively and had made a further payment to Espanyol in return for a draw as he gave testimony in the case led by the investigating judge Fermín Otamendi and brought against 11 men: six former Osasuna directors, three former Betis players and two estate agents also accused of being involved.
Ángel Vizcay also told the provincial court in Pamplona that Osasuna had paid third-party win bonuses to Valladolid and Betis. The club’s former president Miguel Archanco denied that the club had fixed games during his testimony, which followed that of Vizcay.
Vizcay claimed that Osasuna had paid €400,000 in cash for Getafe to lose at Osasuna in 2013 and that Betis were paid €250,000 to throw a match against them the following year. He said that Osasuna had also paid Valladolid a €150,000 win bonus to beat Deportivo de La Coruña and a further €150,000 to Betis to defeat Celta. Deportivo and Celta were two teams fighting against relegation along with Osasuna in the 2012-13 season.
The following season, Vizcay claimed, Osasuna made a €250,000 payment to Espanyol in return for a draw. A point was sufficient for Espanyol to survive; Osasuna ended up suffering relegation anyway.
He further claimed that Betis were paid another €400,000 for beating Valladolid, with whom Osasuna were competing to avoid relegation. Betis had already been relegated and might not have been sufficiently motivated without that payment, Vizcay said.
Vizcay also said that one of the two payments to Betis was made directly to three of their players in a garage in Seville. Jordi Figueras, Xavi Torres and Antonio Amaya are the three Betis players on trial. Vizcay identified Figueras and Torres in court but said that he could not be sure that the third man was Amaya on that occasion but he did identify him as the recipient of the earlier payment.
He said that he had confessed everything he knew to the president of the league, Javier Tebas, when he became aware that La Liga’s investigation was under way and that the Sports Council was carrying out an audit of the club’s accounts. That confession was central to the case making it to court.
Only the payments allegedly made to Betis are officially under investigation in this case, not the others.
Archanco denied those allegations, telling the judge that Osasuna had not fixed games nor ever paid players to that end. The only payment he admitted to was for Betis to beat Valladolid in 2014, a result that suited Osasuna.
The case continues.
