RIO DE JANIERO: Two of the transvestites who met Ronaldo at an hourly hotel in Rio de Janeiro last month took back their initial claims of having had sex and taken drugs with the Milan striker.
After hearing testimony from the two transvestites for nearly four hours, police commissioner Carlos Augusto Nogueira, who is in charge of the case, said both "confessed to having lied on everything they said so far".
"There were no drugs or sex between them that night. They said they made it up because they did not get the money they wanted in their attempted extortion," the police official said.
Nogueira interrogated transvestite Andre Luiz Albertino on Tuesday, known as "Andreia Albertine", who filed suit against Ronaldo April 28, and another transvestite involved in the incident, identified as "Carla Tamine". The two work as prostitutes.
"Their attitude today (Tuesday) surprised us," Nogueira said. "They said they saw an opportunity to get out of that life (of prostitution)."
He explained that both transvestites showed up at the police station of their own accord in order to correct their initial statements.
"They showed that they were really repentant," Nogueira said. Ronaldo has said that, as he left a nightclub, he decided to go to an hourly hotel with a prostitute, not knowing that he was in fact taking with him the transvestite known as "Andreia Albertine".
He added that two other prostitutes joined them at the hotel, but he said that - contrary to what "Andreia" had told the media - that there were no drugs and no intimate relations. Ronaldo insisted that he was just the victim of extortion.
"I did not have sex because when I realised it was not what I was looking for I took my team off the pitch. I never took drugs, I am still a sportsman even if I am injured," the striker said in a TV interview aired late on Sunday.
Ronaldo added that the scandal led to the end of his more than year-long relationship with engineer Maria Beatriz Anthony, 23, but he noted he still hopes they may get back together.
Besides his girlfriend, the striker has made it clear that he thinks the scandal has cost him any chance of extending his contract with Milan, set to expire next month.
And it may also cost him lucrative sponsorship deals with various firms, including Nike, that provide most of the $32 million that constitute his annual income.
Ronaldo admitted that he only has himself to blame for his current troubles.
"It was a tragic moment in which I made the worst decision of my personal life," he said. "I am more than repentant, I am ashamed."
