SPORT: Football
Cristiano Ronaldo wants to block the publication of witness statements in a rape case.

CRISTIANO Ronal­do wants to block the pub­li­ca­tion of dozens of wit­ness state­ments in his Las Vegas rape case — because it could put peo­ple at ‘sig­nif­i­cant risk of harassment’.

Lawyers for the Man Utd strik­er have filed two sep­a­rate respons­es in an ongo­ing legal bat­tle to pre­vent the pub­li­ca­tion of police records in the 2009 case.

The files include a cache of record­ed inter­views, wit­ness state­ments, emails, CCTV footage and med­ical reports.

The New York Times first launched a legal bid to get hold of the Las Vegas Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment records, but was met with stiff opposition.

Ronal­do’s legal team ini­tial­ly argued that much of the infor­ma­tion in the files was obtained ille­gal­ly by the Foot­ball Leaks website.

Now, accord­ing to a new legal fil­ing obtained by The Sun, the star’s lawyers claim wit­ness­es in the case would be put at “risk” if exposed.

They argue the files should not be released for the safe­ty of Ronal­do and his accuser, Kathryn May­or­ga, as well as key wit­ness­es and any­one who pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion, who could suf­fer “poten­tial­ly seri­ous rep­u­ta­tion­al damage”.

Sub­mis­sions filed Feb. 8 state: “The indi­vid­u­als named in the LVMPD fil­ing, as well as those who pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion con­tained there­in, have a strong inter­est in ‘not being undu­ly asso­ci­at­ed with alleged crim­i­nal activity.’ .

The doc­u­ments went on to say that Ronal­do is a “celebri­ty ath­lete” who attracts “sub­stan­tial media atten­tion”, which the lawyers say cre­ates a “sig­nif­i­cant risk of harass­ment” for wit­ness­es if the records are released.

The doc­u­ments added: “Dis­clo­sure of any part of LVM­PD’s record would cer­tain­ly under­mine these pri­va­cy inter­ests and result in unde­served embar­rass­ment and poten­tial­ly seri­ous rep­u­ta­tion­al damage.”

A poten­tial high pro­file wit­ness could be LA socialite Paris Hilton.

Just hours before head­ing to Vegas, Ronal­do par­tied the night away with the blonde heiress until the ear­ly hours of June 11 at the MyHouse club in Los Angeles.

He report­ed­ly met her that night, before head­ing to Vegas the next day, where he met Mayorga.

It is pos­si­ble that the police took a state­ment from the heiress to estab­lish Ronal­do’s behav­ior in the 24 hours before the alleged rape.

Anoth­er wit­ness in the case may be the Por­tuguese super­star’s moth­er, Dolores, who was report­ed­ly stay­ing at the same hotel as her son in Los Ange­les before head­ing to Vegas.