Diego
Maradona has through his lawyer, offered a four-figure reward to identify the
person who tried to deceive the world into believing he was dead.
He has promised more than £8,000 to anyone who can help
him unmask the man responsible for killing him off and forcing him to put out a
statement confirming he was alive but had overdone it on the white wine.
The
57-year-old sparked fears for his well-being when he was helped away from his
VIP box and assisted by medical staff after seeing Argentina avoid
an early World Cup exit
on Tuesday with a dramatic late goal against Nigeria.
Two Spanish-language recordings which have gone viral -
recorded by the same man and released shortly after the match - claimed the
57-year-old had suffered a fatal heart attack.
One said an
adrenaline injection to his heart had failed to save him and the Argentinian
squad were yet to be told he had passed away in hospital.
One of
Maradona's sisters is said to have collapsed after hearing the fake news Diego
had died and trying without success to reach him.
Maradona's
daughter Dalma described the fake social media reports about her dad's death as
'miserable' on Wednesday.
She raged on Twitter: 'I haven't heard them but they told
me what they said. They are false. There's obviously some very twisted people
out there.
'Don't help them go viral. If you do, you should know
they tell lies.'
A second
42-second recording, a WhatsApp message sent to a mystery man called Mati by
someone passing himself off as an Argentinian sports journalist based in
Russia, added: 'They are only going to be announcing the news tomorrow. It's a
family decision.'
Maradona had to phone his partner Rocio Oliva as he
returned to Moscow on a private jet in the early hours of Wednesday morning to
prove he was still alive and refute the heart attack reports.
He also sent
a WhatsApp message to journalist friend Daniel Arcucci, saying he had simply
drunk too much white wine and insisting: 'I swear on the lives of my mum, my
grandson Benjamin and my son Dieguito Fernando's life that nothing happened.'
The soccer star's long-standing lawyer Matias Morla told
Argentinian daily Clarin: 'I've just spoken to my office in Buenos Aires and I
have instructed them to make public the decision to offer a reward of 300,000
Argentinian pesos (£8,340) to the person who provides accurate and precise
information about the author of the voice messages.
'When it comes to technological issues like these, I
think we can get to the bottom of this.
'But
especially if there's a financial incentive, someone who knows how something
started often ends up revealing it and helping to unmask whoever was behind an
atrocity like this.
'It was a very long night. I was in Belarus for work
reasons and helping to organise Diego's travel arrangements.
'But Maradona's sisters heard the news and couldn't
contact me or their brother. One of them ended up collapsing.
'We can't let things like this go unanswered.'
In an interview on on Telesur's 'De La Mano del 10'
programme, Maradona said: 'It makes me a bit angry, because my sister,
yesterday she made me whistle on the phone to see if I was okay, and I went
(whistles)...
'My brother
in Italy, my nephew in the United States were worried, because of course the
bad news travels much faster than the good news.
'I am very much alive, and very well taken care of.'
Sports journalist Daniel Arcucci, who posted the voice
recording Maradona sent him to his Twitter site as well as the one he sent
Rocio, added: 'Maradona's truth doesn't come from some leaked voice message of
dubious origin.
'It's what Diego told Rocio when she called him for a
second time because she was worried about the rumours he had died which were
still doing the rounds.'
No comments:
Post a Comment