A Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) investigation into La Liga referee Jose Luis Munuera Montero has concluded there is no conflict of interest with his business activities and officiating duties.
The RFEF’s regulatory compliance department opened an investigation on February 18 following allegations over a possible conflict of interests regarding Munuera Montero’s consultancy business and the fulfilment of his professional obligations as a referee.
The allegations relate to the 41-year-old’s consultancy company Talentus Sports, which was founded in 2024 and whose clients were alleged to include La Liga, the RFEF and UEFA, European football’s governing body, alongside professional clubs from Spain and abroad. Munuera Montero denied the allegations and the RFEF stated he cooperated fully with the investigation.
The RFEF said that following an analysis of the activity of the companies in which Munuera Montero has a stake in and the degree of his participation in them, it was concluded “there is no real or potential conflict”.
The report read: “Consequently, and taking into account the internal regulations on conflicts of interest and the RFEF’s good practices, there is no reason to justify the adoption of measures against Mr. Munuera Montero”.
Munuera Montero has been officiating in the top flight of Spanish football since 2016. He sent off Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham for swearing during Saturday’s La Liga fixture against Osasuna, and a debate over the England international’s use of language has become a major talking point in Spanish football this week.
In a social media post shared on Tuesday night, Munuera Montero said the allegations were the latest episode in an “excessive attack on the refereeing community” and insisted his company had “not invoiced any amount to any sports entity since its creation, whether clubs, federations or companies in the sports industry.”
He said that the LinkedIn page of Talentus Sports was designed to share job opportunities for “mainly young, post-university students” who held an interest in working within sports and that the company had not neither approached nor received any compensation from any club or organisation.
His statement said: “I will exercise the corresponding civil and criminal actions against those media that have intentionally or recklessly spread falsehoods or incorrect or biased information, causing irreparable damage to the professional prestige, reputation of myself and of the refereeing community, as well as to the personal privacy of myself and of third parties.”
In an interview with Spanish radio station Cope this week, Munuera Montero said he had received death threats in wake of the allegations.
“I am very calm and I want to deny all the slander to which we have been accustomed in recent months,” he said.
“Before I received more than 100,000 threatening messages, death threats, insults… what I did was to silence my Linkedin account. I am not afraid because I have nothing to hide. My family is the one who is suffering the most, they are very worried. They know they can’t ask me to stop, it’s impossible.I try to calm them down. I put up with this defamation, but my parents don’t deserve this.”
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