Rubiales and the federal employees could not be "working" in the villa in Salobreña

“Neither the employees nor the Spanish Football Federation they incurred in any irregularity”. That’s how resounding was the RFEF statement after revealing the newspaper ‘El Mundo’ the statement before the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor of Juan Rubialesuncle and former chief of staff of its president, with the name Luis and the same surname, being his nephew by blood, in which he denounced a “party in a Salobreña private villa (…) rented solely for the enjoyment of the president and his most direct team, paying the expenses with company cards from the RFEF itself”.

As expected, from the Las Rozas Football City They did not take long to respond to these serious accusations. In addition to speaking of “manipulation of a former federal employee moved by spite” and “one more step in the infamous campaign that the president has been suffering in recent months”, in a first statement it was ensured that the orgy, as described by ‘El World’, was actually “a coexistence of planning and organization of federal executives in the town of Salobreña in which the accommodation was entirely paid by each attendee, including Juan Rubiales”.

Opinion

This is the luxurious chalet where the “Salobreña party” of the Federation of Rubiales was organized

Kike Marin

well, however the meeting took place at the beginning of August 2020In addition to the irregularities denounced by Uncle Juan before the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, there is another very serious one in the purely sporting field that will be difficult to avoid by the Secretary of State for Sport, Jose Manuel Francoexcept that, once again, he puts himself in profile and reveals a political background that does nothing but convert the Government of Spain an accomplice in the disastrous management of Spanish football, permanently prosecuted and subjected to a discredit that is difficult to sustain any longer.

It turns out that on June 10 of that year, that is, two months before the meeting in Salobreña, the RFEF board of directors, chaired by Luis Rubiales, agreed to call elections to its general assembly, delegated commission and presidencyso on the dates on which, according to the official version, the “convivence of planning and organization of federative executives” was held, Rubi did not preside over the RFEF, but the management boardwith all that this entails, especially considering that he planned to stand for re-election.

The electoral regulations are blunt

As can be seen in his electoral regulations, and more specifically in the calendar for the 2020-2024 Olympic period, on the same day that the elections are called by the board of directors, the delegated commission must appoint the electoral commission. But not only that, but, as provided in article 12 of the Order ECD/2764/2015, “once new elections have been called, the boards of directors will be dissolvedassuming their functions the management commissions, who will be the body in charge of administering and managing the Federation during the electoral process.

And the aforementioned article adds: “You may not carry out acts that, directly or indirectly, mediately or immediately, induce or condition the vote of the voters and they must observe the principles of objectivity, transparency of the electoral process and equality among the electoral actors”. To end with the following and decisive observation: “These provisions will be applicable to the activity carried out by the Federation staff and by the other federal bodies during the electoral process.”

Indeed, by definition, a manager is a committee that should be limited to the ordinary administration of a federation. Therefore, as the experts on the matter point out, Rubiales should not only explain what his uncle has reported to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, but, in the best of cases, why convened that “work meeting” as chairman of the management committee and not president of the RFEF, whose future they assure in writing that they were going to “plan”.

“The employees did not commit any irregularity,” they assured in their first statement from the RFEF, to identify those involved in a later one, without giving their names, but their positions. That is, the director of Institutional Relations, namely, Antonio Gomez Kingdom; the coordinator of the Cabinet of the Presidency, Jose Maria Timon; the director of Marketing, Ruben Rivera; the director of Competitions and Human Resources, Alfredo Olivares; the director of the Legal Department, Pedro Gonzalez Segura, better known in the Football City of Las Rozas as ‘celebration councilor’; the director of International, George Mowinckeland the deputy secretary general, Miguel Garcia Cabaalso known as Garcia ‘Graba’.

From the RFEF it was reported that all of them were going to sue Juan Rubiales “for having attacked the honor and having hurled insults about the professional activity”. Curious that not included, in addition to Rubiales himself, who presumes to be single, Andrew Campsperhaps because the general secretary joined the last day and, most importantly, in the company of his wife, so he has not had to give any explanation at home…

However, apart from what Uncle Juan denounced, who was also present and precisely because of this he will know very well what he is talking about, it turns out that if the federal employees were not partying, but really working, they could not do it, because they were obliged to maintain the neutrality that prevails in electoral processes. In addition, Rubiales was chairing the management committee at that time and was going to stand for re-election, so it can be said that federal resources were also being made available to a candidate.

It is enough to remember that the previous president of the RFEF, Angel Maria Villarwas dismissed for carrying out activities aimed at publicizing and promoting his candidacy for re-election while he was president of the management commission, that is, exactly the same situation that Rubiales found himself in in August 2020. “I have been penalized the Administration, the Higher Sports Council, through the TAD, for publishing my electoral program in the 2017 elections, being president of the management commission”Villar complained, although last June the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal against his dismissal as president of the RFEF for “commission of an infraction classified as very serious”.

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With this precedent, it seems complicated that the Secretary of State for Sport is not forced to raise the TAD the complaints that may reach the CSD in the coming days for this serious irregularity committed by Rubiales and his executives, who by denying that they were at a party and claiming that it was a work meeting, have fallen into their own trap and have certainly hard to get out of it. As we revealed in the Super Cup Files, the still president of the RFEF sent several messages to the President of the Government himself to complain about TAD resolutions, before which Sánchez chose to maintain a logical safety distance, using brief messages or simple answers of courtesy.