The 9th shift prosecutor for Flagrancia Fernando Romano acted ex officio and summoned the president of Peñarol, Ignacio Ruglio, the entire team of the club, the technical director Mauricio Larriera, the assistant Darío Rodríguez and the sports director Pablo Bengoechea to testify. Aurinegro leaders and players must declare this Monday, as reported by El País and confirmed by El Observador. The summons came after well-known videos with celebrations for obtaining the Uruguayan Championship.
Players who are no longer in the country due to being on license must coordinate an upcoming date to declare. On Saturday two videos went viral, which was what triggered the Prosecutor’s Office to act. In one of them, President Ruglio appeared along with the injured soccer player Valentín Rodríguez, singing aggressively against the traditional rival, Nacional. Some time after the video was posted on the networks, it was downloaded, although this action did not prevent its viralization.
The second video was posted between Saturday and Sunday. In the piece, the aurinegro player Agustín Álvarez Martínez and his partner also sang songs against Nacional. On this occasion, the chants made direct reference to the murder of fans of the rival team. In the live of Instagram, in which the player sang while being recorded by his partner, he said “how can I forget when we kill a chicken.”
Later, Álvarez Martínez’s partner published an apology for the chants via Twitter. There he said that the couple “does not support any type of violence.”
However, the prosecutor considered that in the videos there are acts of criminal appearance. For that reason this Monday the players will have to declare before the Prosecutor’s Office.
In turn, the sports sanction that could fall on “Canario” Álvarez for his chants on the networks is the suspension on the field from one to five games in the next few dates.
National leaders
On the other hand, it is not ruled out that Nacional leaders are cited as a result of the videos that went viral after the result of the tricolor elections, in which the José Fuentes list was elected, that is, the official one. The outgoing president, José Decurnex, said that Ruglio had a “bellicose attitude” after the videos of the celebration for the championship, but, after knowing the results of the elections, the elected leaders, including Decurnex, insulted Peñarol with songs.
For this reason, the Prosecutor’s Office does not rule out summoning the tricolor leaders to testify for the violent chants towards Peñarol, which also went viral.
