In Valencia, it has long been clear to everyone that the largest shareholder, Peter Lim, came to Valencia and bought the controlling interest of Valencia CF for a clear and obvious reason, to be able to do from the inside what they initially thought they would of outside the clubs can buy and sell players.
It is very curious that the club, and also some of its leading journalists, keep trying to tell that Jorge Mendes is only one agent. They assure that everything that has been done here in the last eight and a half years caters exclusively to sporting interests, when it comes to signing players, Mendes says in 80% of cases, and they attribute the sporting situation to bad luck , to COVID and sometimes even to the fans. That hobby, which, according to them, made the players nervous in January and therefore did not win in Mestalla.
It is striking that the club tries to convince that Jorge Mendes is not a member of Lim, while the club knows the story like no other. In fact, it is significant because there are two of the Valencians, who have now been sold to us by some as the best managers in the League, who have experienced it first hand, but I want to highlight one name: Inmaculada Ibañez.
The financial director of Valencia CF sat down at a table on the beach in Valencia, together with Jorge Mendes, LayHoon Chan and Mendes’ lawyer. They ate to make a stopover after these three went into the club offices to look at the club’s accounts, and before going back in the afternoon to make another check. That was a few years before Lim finally bought the club, but Salvo was not there, at that time Llorente presided over the club and Mendes was already interested in buying it with his friend Lim.
This is something that Inma knows in detail, just as Inma knows in detail all the operations that have been carried out over the past nine years and who the commissionaires have been, as well as the front agents they have used, mainly the artist who is Mendes. In Portugal, the institutions have been investigating the Portuguese for some time now and yesterday we learned through an official statement from the Portuguese Public Prosecutor’s Office that they are trying to find reliable evidence of the serious indications they already have that they could have defrauded up to €60 million from the Portuguese treasury in player purchases, sales and renewals. It is also striking that he is being watched in Portugal, that he had serious problems in Madrid because his clients evaded taxes thanks to his advisers, but listen, here in Valencia, despite the clear evidence of the hard-hitting commissions, some defend you that they don’t take them away and they even call you crazy.
I’ve heard for a long time that Inma Ibañez is a great financier. That’s one of the best in the league. It’s a much repeated mantra and I’ve been wondering for months if it’s possible to be a very good financier, especially the one in charge of a club’s finances, because she’s the director, in a entity that lost 180 euros. million euros in nine seasons. That’s the question I ask myself. Are you really telling me that a CFO can be good at losing $20 million a year? I’m sorry, but I don’t drink. They don’t burden me.
Inma Ibañez is one of the most important people in the club and also one of Meriton’s most trusted people. As much as they deny it, she was the first person Lay Hoon leaned on when she returned to Valencia on June 22. And if she wanted to, she would have been the general manager of the club, but she didn’t want to. . I prefer to stay in the second row because it’s much more comfortable there, from near anonymity for most fans to those who get teased every year, as they will soon try to do.
It would be interesting if Inma Ibañez gave us her opinion, always very interesting when it comes to numbers. In December he acknowledged that the club was on the verge of collapse, that they had been avoiding the cause of the dissolution for several years and that the banks had stopped giving them money. If the club is that economic disaster, it’s because it agrees. And why does she agree, why does she swallow surgeries she knows shouldn’t be done, and yet so Valencian, doesn’t he do an exercise in Valencianism and leave the Asians alone with their business? It would be nice if the Valencians within the club, in relevant positions, knew that the truth eventually comes out and that despite the fact that inside they are convinced that they are a minority, the reality is that there is an overwhelming majority it will never be erased from his memories of Meriton’s misdeeds at the club. And she, she in particular, validates absolutely all of them with her silences and her signing of annual accounts.
Someday the melon of Inma Ibañez, according to some balls the best financial director of the League, will have to be opened. She does those journalists, despite the fact that she says she does not speak to the press.
Héctor Gómez / “Sports Stand”
Source: Goal