The Juventus striker plans to sue the German publication who were first to report the claims.
Cristiano Ronaldo has denied claims that he raped an American woman a number of years ago.
A report in Der Spiegel claims the incident took place in a Palms Place hotel room in Las Vegas in June 2009.
In an Instagram video, Ronaldo dismissed the claim as “fake news”, saying: “They want to promote by my name. It’s normal.”
According to Reuters, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner’s lawyers have described the allegations as “blatantly illegal”.
Ronaldo’s solicitor Dr Christian Schertz released a statement claiming that he had plans to sue the German publication, claiming that the reporting by Der Spiegel “is probably one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years”.
You can read the statement in full below:
“Following the current SPIEGEL reporting on our client Cristiano Ronaldo, we hereby declare the following: The reporting in SPIEGEL is blatantly illegal. It violates the personal rights of our client Cristiano Ronaldo in an exceptionally serious way.
“This is an inadmissible reporting of suspicions in the area of privacy. It would therefore already be unlawful to reproduce this reporting.
“We have been instructed to immediately assert all existing claims under press law against SPIEGEL, in particular compensation for moral damages in an amount corresponding to the gravity of the infringement, which is probably one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years.”
Der Spiegel claim the incident took place in Palms Place hotel room in Las Vegas in June 2009.
Christoph Winterbach, a journalist with Der Spiegel, posted a thread on Twitter which shed some more light on the actions that the publication had taken before reporting the story.
https://twitter.com/derWinterbach/status/1046478115734720513
