German magazine Der Spiegel has published accusations by an American woman who alleges she was raped by the Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009.
According to the report, the woman claimed to have been raped by the footballer in a Las Vegas hotel in 2009.
Meanwhile, the lawyers for Ronaldo said on Friday they would sue Der Spiegel for publishing these "blatantly illegal" accusations.
Ronaldo's lawyer Christian Schertz said in a statement the report was "an inadmissible reporting of suspicions in the area of privacy", and that he would seek legal redress for his client from the magazine.
Ronaldo, one of the biggest names in world sport, has been named player of the year five times, He recently transferred to Juventus from Real Madrid for 100 million euros. The Italian club had declined to comment on the Der Spiegel report.
The magazine said the rape allegedly took place in June 2009 in a hotel room in Las Vegas, according to Leslie Mark Stovall, lawyer for the alleged victim, Kathryn Mayorga.
Ronaldo and Mayorga then reached an out-of-court agreement, according to Stovall as reported in the magazine.
It said, according to Stovall, that she had pledged never to speak of the accusation again and Ronaldo paid her $375,000.
"Kathryn was sexually assaulted in June 2009 by an individual named Cristiano Ronaldo," Stovall said in a video published online by Der Spiegel.
According to Der Spiegel, Ronaldo denies the accusations saying the sex was consensual.
According to the magazine, Der Spiegel first reported on the rape accusations one-and-a-half years ago. That story was based on documents made available to the newsmagazine by the whistleblower platform Football Leaks.
The magazine's Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Alfred Weinzierl, told Reuters that Der Spiegel had repeatedly written to Ronaldo's management and lawyers about the allegations before publishing its report.
"We sent written questions, to which there were no answers. Nobody sued us in connection with earlier Ronaldo reports," he said in an email.
Mayorga told Der Spiegel she no longer felt bound by the non-disclosure agreement as she suffers from the consequences of the night nine years ago.
"I've had like these serious breakdowns," she told the magazine. "And again, blaming of the rape. And I blame him, and I blame myself for signing that thing."
(With Reuters Inputs)
