Embattled former Spanish football chief Luis Rubiales could be sentenced to a two-and-a-half-year prison term for the infamous ‘kissgate’ scandal.
Rubiales, 46, stoked reactions when footage of him kissing Spain women’s national team player Jennifer Hermoso during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup went viral.
Celebrating La Roja’s 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup triumph, the former UEFA vice president grabbed Hermoso on the head and planted a kiss on her.
The gesture sparked widespread criticism and backlash from Spanish football stakeholders, professional footballers, including the global football community.
There was a widespread call for Rubiales to resign from his role as Spanish football chief. Amidst the outrage, Luis Rubiales defiantly turned down calls for his resignation.
He insisted he will never resign as he has been wrongly targeted by ‘false feminists’ and ‘social murderers.’
He contended that the kiss with Hermoso was consensual and he had never intended to assault the female footballer sexually.
However, his argument was discountenanced by Jennifer Hermoso, who insisted she had never consented to the kiss and had felt embarrassed by the indecent gesture.
While the war of words on what actually transpired between the pair continued, Luis Rubiales was still under pressure to resign. The world’s football governing body FIFA finally stepped in to provisionally suspend the embattled football administrator pending investigations into the case.
In October 2023, FIFA slammed Luis Rubiales with a three-year ban after finding him guilty of kissing Hermoso without the consent of the player. Meanwhile, he had fiinally agreed to step down from his footballing role in Spain and Europe but was still under probe by Spanish prosecutors.
Spanish prosecutors want two-and-a-half-year jail sentence for Rubiales
According to reports from Spanish outlets, Spanish prosecutors want Luis Rubiales to be jailed for two-and-a-half years for the infamous ‘kissgate’ scandal.
Details of the pre-trial demands made public on Wednesday, March 27, revealed the prosecutors want separate judgments on two charges for Rubiales.
They want him to be slammed with a one-year prison sentence for sexual assault; and then, another one-and-a-half-year sentence for alleged coercion, including €100,000 compensation payment to Hermoso.
For context purposes, the second allegation of coercion stems from reports Rubiales had attempted to get Jennifer Hermoso to speak to his defense amid the row.
Luis Rubiales could be slammed with a two-and-a-half-year jail term – a penalty he will serve concurrently with FIFA’s three-year ban if the Spanish Court find him guilty of the allegations by the prosecutors.
