July 31, 2019 11:27
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency is investigating whether football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo violated the law by letting down fans when he failed to play in a friendly match in Korea last Friday.
Oh Seok-hyun, an attorney at L.K.B & Partners, lodged a complaint with police against Ronaldo and his team Juventus as well as TheFasta, the agency that organized the match, for fraud.
Disappointed Korean fans who paid for tickets to watch Ronaldo play plan to file a class-action suit demanding compensation from TheFasta. As of Tuesday, around 2,000 people joined the class-action lawsuit.
A police officer said, "If we can't find objective evidence of deliberate deception, no fraud case can be established and police can't intervene since it would become a civil case."
Even if deliberate deception is suspected, it is unlikely that Ronaldo would show up for questioning here. Police could in theory turn to Interpol or ask a foreign government to extradite him, but that seems disproportionate since Interpol only gets involved in crimes that carry a punishment of more than a year in prison.
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