The judge files the complaint against Leo Messi and his foundation by not appreciating evidence of criminality

The judge of the National Court María Tardón has filed the complaint against the FC Barcelona player Leo Messi, his father Jorge Horacio Messi, his brother Rodrigo Messi and the foundation of the Argentine star for alleged accounting crimes, fraud, against the Public Treasury and money laundering.

In a car dated July 2, the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 3 has decreed the provisional dismissal in the absence of evidence of criminality after the proceedings carried out in a "particularly complex and exhaustive investigation" of almost two years.

All this as a result of the complaint filed in June 2019 by the former employee of the Federico Rettori Foundation, who assured that Messi and his environment would have benefited from the foundation to receive personal payments that were not intended for social purposes and thus get rid of paying taxes to the Treasury.

In the letter, the magistrate goes further and points out that despite those two years of investigation at the request of the Prosecutor's Office, it has not been possible to prove any relationship or employment relationship between Rettori and the foundation. Moreover, the judge explains that from the labor documentation of the Spanish and Argentine entities, provided by the representation of the Messi Foundation, "it appears that, in reality, the complainant did not have a working relationship with it."

For Tardón "it is not only that the complainant has not proven to have suffered any harm" from the foundation, "but that the possible irregularities that he invoked in his complaint have been clearly shown to be non-existent." Among the facts described in the complaint itself, Rettori argued that until 2013 the Leo Messi Foundation "was never registered in the Catalan Registry of Foundations", which means that all these years "it operated without any type of control or accountability in any official organism".

"Poor reliability of the complainant's contributions"

Regarding the crimes against the Public Treasury and money laundering denounced by Rettori, the magistrate explains that, as reported by the Public Prosecutor's Office, "the use of bank accounts in which the true ultimate owner of the the goods, nor have concepts been used that did not correspond to reality ".

In this sense, Tardón recalls that it was "the unreliability of the complainant's contributions" that led to the decision to "carry out an exhaustive investigation of the actions of the Leo Messi Foundation in relation to such accusations", although in the end it was not found no hint.

In fact, the judge insists that "a large part of the documentation provided by the complainant" consisted of "references to selected journalistic information, regarding which" without discussing their "undoubted value in the field of information, they cannot be sole support for the survival of the object of the criminal process ".

Thus, Tardón argues that the doctrine requires filing the case from the moment the commission of a criminal act is discarded or because the perpetration of the crime that would have given rise to the formation of the cause or did not exist does not seem duly justified. where appropriate, reasons to charge a specific person for them, thus avoiding the undue lengthening of the criminal process.

The head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 3 reopened in December 2019 the case against the striker, thus attended to the reform appeal that Rettori had presented after the order to file the proceedings, since the Prosecutor's Office also positioned itself in favor of revoking the dismissal to take a statement from the complainant.

Then, the judge agreed to the provisional dismissal of the proceedings with similar allegations. Tardón argued that the complaint brief included an account of events based on journalistic news without providing a single element of personal and direct knowledge lacking verisimilitude, which would involve resorting to prospective investigations incompatible with the principles that govern the criminal process. .