SPANISH Football Federation (RFEF) boss Ángel María Villar's niece has been murdered after being kidnapped in México DF, despite her family having paid part of the ransom money demanded.
María Villar Galaz, 39 (pictured), was leaving the IBM office, where she worked as a consultant, in the Santa Fe neighbourhood in the west of the Mexican capital on September 13 at night, and took a taxi to Polanco, the suburb where she lived.
Nothing further was known about her whereabouts between catching a taxi and her kidnappers calling her family in Spain the next day to demand a ransom of two million Mexican Pesos - US$100,800, or about €90,000.
According to acting foreign minister in Spain José Manuel García-Margallo, the family paid a sum 'considerably lower' than requested – 65,000 Pesos, being US$3,275 or €3,000 – the very same day, and reported the abduction immediately.
Whether or not they had done this to buy time and had agreed to find the rest of the money at a later date is not yet known, but the kidnappers did not consider this enough and the woman's body has since been found in a river.
Her husband and a male cousin duly attended the location the abductors ordered them to be at to hand over the money, in the México DF suburb of Iztapalapa, and handed over 65,000 Pesos.
María's body was discovered in a sewage channel in the town of Santiago Tianguistenco, 56 kilometres from where she was kidnapped.
Her hands and feet were tied and a plastic bag taped over her head, which is thought to have been used to suffocate her.
A female friend who has worked with María in Madrid and in México DF says she was 'a straightforward person' and not at all ostentatious, 'not your typical starry type who dresses in Chanel and Rolex when she walks around town' and 'not a person who would attract attention' as someone of wealth and privilege.
“As a professional, she was a perfect 10; everyone spoke really highly of her. For a woman to scale the heights she did in a society as sexist as [México] and in such a tough field as IT shows how much she was worth. Whenever you had a problem, your first thought was, 'what would María do?' She always spoke very clearly and confidently in work meetings,” her colleague, who wished to remain anonymous for safety reasons, revealed.
María and her husband had moved to México DF in early 2012 to take up jobs at Everis IT Consultancy and, in 2015, María started work as a high-ranking member of the board of directors at IBM – a firm which has publicly expressed its condolences and says it is 'very much affected by this tragic incident'.
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