The Civil Guard enters the headquarters of a dozen clubs for alleged Social Security fraud

The Civil Guard and the Labor Inspectorate have entered the headquarters of a dozen clubs that were active in the former Second B and Third Division to investigate a possible fraud against Social Security and footballers, as reported by Cadena Ser and has been able to confirm AS. The suspicion of the authorities is that all these teams have made payments in B to footballers and have contributed below the real amounts they pay their workers. Something that is detrimental to the public coffers and the players themselves.

According to Cadena Ser, the Civil Guard has carried out a raid or are planning to do so at the headquarters of clubs such as Cartagena (currently in Second), Hercules, Linense, Calahorra, Salamanca, Mérida, Extremadura or La Nucía. All of them belonging to categories of non-professional football, whose economic controls are more lax (The former are currently being applied, before they did not exist for these divisions) than those implemented by LaLiga in the First and Second Division. As AS has learned, the investigation has been carried out in sports cities, where a Labor inspector with the support of a Civil Guard has come to question footballers about payments in black. and they have also entered the stadium offices to verify the contracts. In the Hercules, one of the investigated clubs, they affirm to AS to be totally calm since they assure not to have committed any irregularity or breached the law. The investigators left Almendralejo after requesting tax and employment information from the club since 2017, which they have a deadline to deliver until November 29. In addition, as they did in other clubs, they were asking the players individually if they charged by bank transfer or by hand.

In these categories, now known as First RFEF, Second RFEF and Third RFEF, formerly called Second B and Third, there have always been complaints from various clubs to others for payments in B, which undermined equality when competing. The creation of the First RFEF as a semi-professional category was at the request of several clubs with the aim of tightening economic control and leading the competition to greater growth.

Both the Civil Guard and Labor do not rule out that there is little or much widespread fraud in the semi-professional categories and, in addition, they warn that they have the suspicion that this practice of black payments also extends to footballers in lower categories. Both Civil Guard and Labor inspectors suspicions of payments to footballers (being a part due to the legal flow and another part notably greater than the first in black and not quoted to the public coffers), that the money from ticket sales has not been fully declared, as well as the income from some sponsorships.

The practice of making payments with B money has been a subject of debate within the bronze category of Spanish football in recent years. Several presidents of the former Second B came to assure this newspaper that almost 80% of the clubs in the category could have carried out this practice on some occasion or regularly. Even footballers in the category denounced the serious situation they went through during the pandemic due to ERTE and black payments. By collecting a large part of their salary in black, when the clubs went to the ERTE during the football stoppage due to COVID, these players received only the quoted part, being a very low salary and that led them to go through financial problems.