The club’s president, Os Nazarenos, has denied signing contracts with the players in a case of alleged human trafficking and aid to illegal immigration, which began this Thursday in the Judicial Court of Leiria.
“I didn’t sign any contract, it’s fake,” João Zarro told the refereeing team, a statement he repeated several times during the first session of the trial, which involves three more defendants, two football businessmen and the club. The legal representative of the club and one of the businessmen were absent.
Faced with permanent contracts in the process, the defendant, a lawyer, has repeatedly stated that he recognizes his signature on the documents, but does not know “how it got here.”
“I recognize my signatures, but I did not put them on these documents,” he assured, referring “without a doubt” that this was a fake signature and guaranteeing that he also did not sign the blank documents.
On the other hand, he listed other clubs that “the same thing happened to them, they were victims of these people”, also in signature cases, but these “remained out of the process”.
The four defendants are charged with 17 crimes of human trafficking, two of which are aggravated, and 17 crimes of aiding illegal immigration.
The indictment alleges that between March and April 2018, João Zarro was approached by two individuals posing as “football businessmen”, each of whom developed a plan to “obtain economic gain by poaching football players from Brazil and Peruvian by nationality, who wanted to play football at a professional level in Europe.”
According to the Ministry of State (MP), two businessmen approached the players in these countries, “promising them good working conditions, accommodation, food,” as well as resolving the logistical issues of international transfer and legalization in Portugal, ”the report says. employment contract and good salary.
In implementing the plan, the defendants also began recruiting players for the Nazaré club for which they would play.
To facilitate the recruitment operation and make the transfer of players more credible, two businessmen – one of them was present at the trial but remained silent – introduced themselves as managing partners of a never-registered player agency company. Through this company, they signed an agreement with the club through its president, valid for the 2018/2019 season.
The MP added that the president and two agents ensured “the drafting of employment contracts and promises of employment contracts” to give the appearance of legitimacy.
The cable details how each of the 17 players (two were underage at the time) were recruited, the amounts spent to come to Portugal, how they arrived in Nazaré, where and how they stayed, and the money they received for playing in club (one of them will receive only 20 euros for at least eight games, some will receive nothing).
According to the document, they lived in apartments, as well as in the High-Performance Surfing Center in Nazare and in the Municipal Stadium.
In the apartments, it was “necessary to sleep at least three people on a bed”, on a sofa and even on the floor.
As for the foodstuffs provided by the entrepreneurs, they were supplied “sporadically”, of poor quality and in insufficient quantity.
The refereeing team was told by João Zarro that he was approached by businessmen who asked him if the club would be interested in a “possible partnership”, given that although they had “a plan to create a new club”, “Os Nazarenos” already had facilities.
A meeting followed where the businessmen were told that Os Nazarenos was an “amateur, poor club” with no “funds for the maintenance of the players”, hearing from them: “No problem, because we take care of everything, all expenses, accommodation, meals , flights, medical examinations, international transfer costs – we will take care of everything.”
The club president added that those who reported that they were “partners of a company that was already doing this job in Brazil (…) made a very modest, very serious speech”, acknowledging: “We are done, all of us, management, for doing this nonsense.”
While admitting that “too many” players had arrived, the manager justified this by saying that when they started arriving the club knew it would have “seven or eight players” next season when the team needed “21, 22, 23”.
“Without these players, we wouldn’t have enough players to play,” he said, stressing that the athletes “were literally abandoned by these two gentlemen” and “everyone knows that these are the people who dedicated themselves to them.”
The defendant, who assured that the club did not gain anything from this situation, later clarified how he learned that the players were starving, explaining that the club’s leaders began to take care of the nutrition of the athletes.
When asked if he thought it was too much of a responsibility that the club shouldn’t take on, and if the bell rang, Joao Zarro replied that “it was later” and admitted that he was “naive, geeky”.
The trial will continue on the 9th.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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