Three Members of the European Parliament have written to the European Commission demanding that an investigation be launched into Gareth Bale's transfer to Real Madrid in 2013.
Daniel Dalton, Sander Loones and Ramon Termosa, who are MEPs from Britain, Belgium and Spain respectively, want a probe to uncover whether Bale's move to La Liga from Tottenham Hotspur was backed Spanish banks which had been bailed out by EU taxpayers.
Details of the Bale deal were leaked last month, revealing just how much it cost and how it was structured.
I have today asked the European Commission whether taxpayers' money was used to underwrite the Gareth Bale transfer. pic.twitter.com/FgBMJjIeJx
— Daniel Dalton (@ddalton40) February 17, 2016
The MEPs' questions relate to the promissory notes detailed in the deal, with The Telegraph reporting that those same promissory notes "which assumed the risk for the three outstanding instalments on the deal that Madrid agreed with Tottenham Hotspur for Bale, have been reported in Spain to have been bought by, among others, Bankia, the Spanish bank that was bailed out to the tune of €18 billion [£14 billion] by the EU".
The MEPs believe that if the banks in question had used taxpayers' money indirectly, then "it would constitute illegal state aid" according to The Telegraph.
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