What is true is that the move seems to be a collusion between Steve Bruce and Figueroa's agent. Perhaps somewhat hipocritical of the Black Cats boss following his comments over Kenwyne Jones's proposed move to Liverpool.
Tit for tat aside, Latics fans will be pleased to hear that the club have rejected two approaches for Figueroa. The Honduran is a vital part of the Latics side and his departure cannot be afforded this January.
Martinez went one step further as he confirmed the move is the sole motivation for agents who can be considered corrupt.
He said: "You can see that some agents are an unhealthy corruption in the game. 'You can understand why he's been affected but the authorities should look into the transfer window and why the agents have this power and have this unhealthy control in the game with the backing of a Premier League football club and that' s disgusting.
"Unhappy is not the right word. I'm disgusted. The authorities should look into this. I'm saying that what's clear is that everything that's been in the papers, we had two insulting bids for the player, the player's not for sale and the times that any bid was a good bid for Wigan are gone.
"We've made it clear that we're not going to sell any of our best performers and when you don't want to take 'no' for an answer and you're going to carry on pushing that situation, that's clear corruption in the game.
"We're going to look into it and it's going to be really hard to prove anything. We can watch a few weeks back managers complaining and doing exactly the same thing behind the scenes and the whole thing is hard to take."