The battle between the former glories of Real Madrid’s Ultras Sur has reached the Supreme Court. The judges will decide in the coming months whether to admit or reject the appeal of a former leader of the Peña Veteranos, chaired by José Luis Ochaíta and which brings together former leaders of the Bernabéu ultra group, against his two-year prison sentence for having almost 100,000 euros from the group. The prosecution and the association have requested that his sentence be confirmed while the convicted person defends, appeal after appeal, that Ochaíta and the rest of the association knew and approved that those tens of thousands of euros had been taken from the accounts of the supporters’ clubs to end up in the shoes of the accused’s mother.
The Madrid fan club Veteranos was born after Real Madrid decided to expel the Ultras Sur from the stadium stands. Decades of violence and, at times, cronyism with the club, ended when former leaders of the far-right group rallied around a group that, after decades of violence and internal struggles with the young Nazis for control of the stands, denies violence but has its own wars, even economic ones.
It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that the former leaders of Ultras Sur realized that the Peña Veteranos were missing a lot of money. Specifically, 98,186.02 euros that, according to the investigation carried out by the Civil Guard, were withdrawn in more than 660 transfers by the accused, vice-president of the association, to send the money to the accounts of a member of his family. He did so, according to the justice, “without being authorized and without incorporating said amount into his assets.”
Several visible faces of the Ultras Sur paraded on the pitch in the most voluminous chapter that the former members of the far-right Real Madrid supporters’ group have presented in years in court. One of them was Ochaita himself, leader of the ultras during their most influential period at Chamartín: “He was more than a brother,” he said at the trial of his former partner.
The Provincial Court of Madrid has sentenced the former vice-president of the club to two years in prison for the crime of embezzlement, in addition to a fine of 1,080 euros and the obligation to return the almost 100,000 euros that he withdrew, little by little and in more than 600 transfers from the club’s accounts. A sentence that was confirmed several months ago by the Superior Court of Justice of the capital, with the case pending a decision by the Supreme Court.
The Madrid TSJM rejected the arguments of the convicted person, who claimed that the management of Peña Madridista Veteranos was a “perfect mess”, that neither the president nor the treasurer fulfilled their duties and that all the money he took was done “with the full knowledge” of the board of directors for their work. These “supposedly legal” arguments, the Madrid court said, did not support his “confusing and disjointed” alternative presentation.
The members of this Peña that in the past led Ultras Sur lost the leadership of the group when a younger faction, with a renewed appetite for violence, took over. Then noted for having joined Florentino Pérez’s new Grada Joven, Ochaíta and his team threw themselves into the creation of this new club, called “Veteranos”, which today has more than a thousand members.
Prosecutor’s office requests confirmation of conviction
The legal battle between this former member of the group that brought together the former leaders of Ultras Sur and his colleagues is not limited to this criminal procedure alone. Judicial sources explain to this newspaper that José Luis Ochaíta, president of the group and former leader of the ultra group, declared himself under investigation on the accusation of disseminating the arrest report of the convicted person.
In the case of the embezzlement of almost 100,000 euros from the accounts of the Peña Madridista Veteranos, both the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office have requested confirmation of his two-year prison sentence. “The justification he alleges as remuneration for his work has been contradicted by several witnesses who performed the same function,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office explains in its contestation document.
The Supreme Court will have to decide in the coming months whether to reject the appeal or agree to study his allegations. The three reasons, as in previous cases, consist of denouncing the lack of evidence to have been convicted, denouncing the fact that the sentence prejudged the judgment and also that the documents provided on the same day of the trial were not taken into account.
