Liga Deportiva claim de la Cruz money

ULISES DE LA CRUZ'S former Ecuadorian club Liga Deportiva Universitaria are claiming that the defender's last club Hibernian failed to pay them a sell-on fee following the player's move last month to Premiership side Aston Villa.

The club's president Esteban Paz is to submit a claim to Fifa stating that the Scottish Premier League club failed to present them documentation of de la Cruz's transfer fee to Villa Park.

The Easter Road side were supposed to hand Liga twenty per-cent of the transfer fee made from the 30-year-old's move to Villa and Paz admitted that they have yet to receive their share of the transfer fee.

Paz said: "They didn't want to declare how much they sold the player (de la Cruz) to Aston Villa but that is going to end.

"We are going to make a claim with Fifa because Hibernian owes us 20 per-cent of the transfer of Ulises de la Cruz.

"We have done everything in a legal way and we expect them (Hibernian) to do the same."

Hibs bought de la Cruz for £700,000 in June 2001 before selling him to Graham Taylor's side for an undisclosed amount, though it was expected to be in the range of around £2 million.