Real Madrid president Florentino Perez – of current leaked audio scandals infamy – made reference to the 2007 transfer which saw Pepe move to the Bernabeu from Porto, but the multi-faced president has now apparently made an attempt to clarify his scurrilous comments.
Perez has sent a letter to his FC Porto counterpart Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa as the sensational fallout from the explosive leaked audio tapes continues to rock the Spanish capital.
In tapes recorded in 2012 and now released by El Confidencial, Perez is heard nonchalantly launching virulent attacks on a series of high-profile Real Madrid football names.
Few were spared, with the likes of even Cristiano Ronaldo, Raul, Jose Mourinho, Guti, Figo and Mesut Ozil all at the other end of his ugly tongue-lashings in one way or another.
And super agent Jorge Mendes was another to draw ire from Perez, casting aspersions that some of his clients ignored his advice, accompanied with allegations that there may have been some abnormal financial dealings in the 2007 transfer that saw Pepe join Los Blancos from Porto.
Although Ramon Calderon was the president back then, Perez still insisted on having his say on the transaction.
As per the transalation by Marca, he said:
“That the 30 million [euros] have left here and arrived there, no doubt, but now you have to look at the bank it’s ended up in.
“He does that with Jorge Mendes, the representative of Porto’s president [Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa], with him everything is odd. Mendes pops up and he’d pay him as he’s the Porto president’s alibi.
“He and Mendes got money from the Russian with the Mourinho deal and the [Ricardo] Carvalho and [Paulo] Ferreira ones…and that money, they take it to Switzerland.
“Someone mixed up in all this should get mad and they have to give us a clue about that account in Switzerland.”
But in an open letter printed on Porto’s website, Perez has now attempted to distance himself from those claims, suggesting their negotiations have always been done with “the utmost honesty and transparency.
The full letter reads:
“Dear President, I am writing to inform you about the publication of a recording that was made by a journalist in an illicit and illegal manner and which was published by a media outlet in a decontextualized way and absolutely manipulated.
“As we know, all the negotiating processes in which our clubs took part, with the intervention of Mr. Jorge Mendes in some of them, were carried out with utmost honesty and transparency.
“It has always been well thanks to your seriousness and professionalism as president of such a prestigious and friendly club, and that of Mr Jorge Mendes in the negotiations in which he intervened.
“I am convinced that both our personal friendship and the magnificent institutional relationship between our clubs are above these manipulations, which I have already placed in the hands of my lawyers.”
The football world, particularly in Spain, had been rudely awakened and consciences violently shaken when news had begun leaking out early last season revealing the numerous scandalous excesses that the previous ruling regime at Barcelona had been responsible for under then president Josep Maria Bartomeu.
And now another tsunami of scandals is slamming Spanish shores, this time in the capital city, home of one of the biggest football clubs in the world.
Yet again another club president is involved, with this pugnacious one clearly brandishing an iron fist ready to pulverize anything in its way. Although fodder for the masses, the revelations and disclosures are nonetheless sordid and ugly.
One wonders when this will all end so that we could all just simply enjoy our beloved sport of football in its purest, unadulterated state – minus the evil of politics and greed for gain?