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CRISTIANO RONALDO’S FATHER-IN-LAW DIES IN ARGENTINA PRISON

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This is another heartache too much for the world’s renowned footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo who has recently been going through off-field issues of rape allegation and tax evasion.

Now the convicted drug trafficker father of his girlfriend has reportedly died in his native Argentina after a long battle against illness.

Jorge Eduardo Rodriguez Gorjon, Ronaldo’s father-in-law dies in prison , serving jail term since 2003 for drug related offences

According to UK’s Daily Mail, the football star’s partner Georgina Rodriguez posted a birthday photo on her Instagram earlier this week from Buenos Aires and wrote: ‘Coincidences of life. I land in the country I was born in at the same time and the day of my birth 25 years ago.’

Georgina Rodriguez, Ronaldo’s girl friend

She gave no hint of the reason for her trip, thought to be her first to Argentina since her dad was kicked out of Spain in 2013 and banned from returning after doing ten years jail for two drugs trafficking offences.

Celeb Spanish magazine Hola reported on its website on Friday that the pretty brunette had flown to Buenos Aires following the death of Jorge Eduardo Rodriguez Gorjon at the age of 70.

He is said to have suffered from complications related to a stroke he had two-and-a-half years ago.

No-one from Cristiano Ronaldo’s agency Gestifute, which rarely comments on the footballer’s private life, was available early Friday.

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Fans of the footballer and his partner, who gave birth to their one-year-old daughter Alana Martina in November 2016, have taken to social media to offer their condolences.

One, writing on the Instagram page of Georgina’s sister Ivana, said: ‘My sincere condolences.

‘I hope you find comfort in God. I am very sad for you. Be strong. We are all with you.’

Another messaged Georgina to say: ‘I am very sorry for your loss. We are thinking of you.’

Buenos Aires-born former footballer Jorge was jailed in 2003 and released in 2013 after receiving sentences of 11 years and two years, although he was on licence for part of that time and not behind bars 24/7.

He is thought to have been kicked out of the country and banned from returning to Spain after completing his sentence in August 2013.

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It was known he was seriously ill and being cared for by a relative, believed to get by with money former shop worker Georgina and her older sister Ivana sent them.

Jorge, who met Georgina’s mum after moving to Spain in the eighties, was found guilty of trafficking with cocaine and cannabis resin in separate trials at Madrid’s top criminal court the Audiencia Nacional.

Judges there deal with the extraditions of British criminals and have also tried some of Spain’s most dangerous terrorists including the men responsible for the 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 193 people and injured around 2,000.

His cocaine trafficking conviction, set out in an 18-page document dated July 28 2003, shows how he masterminded a failed attempt to smuggle more than £100,000 of cocaine from Spain to France using a bolthole where he was in hiding from outstanding arrest warrants.

Two accomplices were stopped by police near Madrid on January 26, 1999 as they drove towards the French city of Nice to deliver the drugs to an Italian nicknamed ‘Espaguetti’ – ‘Spaghetti’ in English.

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The passenger tried to avoid arrest by throwing the drugs – just over three kilos of 83 per cent pure cocaine – out of the window of their Fiat Tipo.

Georgina’s dad failed to get incriminating phone taps rejected as evidence at his trial which linked him to a Colombian that paid for the drugs.

Prosecutors wanted him jailed for 13-and-a-half years but the three trial judges decided on an 11-year sentence and £106,500 fine, ruling he had carried out ‘coordination tasks.’

He received his second sentence on November 22, 2010.

A different Audiencia Nacional judge handed him a two-year jail term for smuggling cannabis resin from Morocco to Spain with six accomplices.

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Martinez was convicted of organising a boat drugs drop in the Costa Tropical holiday resort of Roquetas de Mar in December 2008 during a brief early release on licence.

Police discovered nearly a tonne of cannabis resin valued at more than £1m during a raid on a nearby warehouse the drugs were taken to after being smuggled into Spain.

Two guns and six bullets, described as being ‘in perfect working order’ and provided by two gang members who were also convicted of weapons possession, were found in the same warehouse.

Prosecutors demanded a four-year, six-month jail sentence for Rodriguez but he was let off with a lighter punishment because he confessed.

Juventus striker Cristiano, who will turn 34 next Tuesday, forged his relationship with Georgina during lock-ins at the upmarket clothes store where she used to work.

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The former Real Madrid striker, facing a new US police investigation over Kathryn Mayorga’s claims he raped her at a Las Vegas hotel in 2009 which he has denied, met Georgina at a Gucci store in central Madrid in June 2016 when he was shopping for summer clothes.

She soon became his first serious girlfriend since he broke up with Russian beauty Irina Shayk at the start of 2015.

He moved her into his luxury home on a gated estate on the outskirts of the Spanish capital before setting up home with her in Turin.

Last year the footballer’s mum said of Georgina during a magazine interview about her son’s love life, children and his alcoholic dad Dinis who drank himself into an early grave in September 2005: ‘She is the mother of my grand-daughter. She is a future daughter-in-law. She’s not my daughter-in-law yet. She’s a future daughter-in-law. She’s a very calm person.’

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Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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