The former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) Luis Rubiales This Monday he denied having paid commissions to Gerard Piqué or his company Kosmos for the transfer of the Super Cup to Saudi Arabia, and also for having collected them, and added that thanks to that contract “football was saved.”
Rubiales declared this Monday before the Majadahonda judge that he is investigating alleged corrupt practices during his time at the head of the Federation and has stressed that The commission that Kosmos charged for its mediation was paid by the Arabs, never by the Federationand it was finally included in the contract because it did not harm the entity he presided over in any way.
The former president has stressed that this contract is signed in the middle of a pandemic in which, If we had not achieved that income, Spanish football could have died and he has made the most of his management, having managed to increase turnover from 140 to 400 million euros and having achieved that Spain is assigned the 2030 World Cup.
The contact with Kosmos was not established by the Federation, but by Piqué, who was also the one who contacted the Arab company Sela, and between them they would negotiate the commission of the then footballer. “There has not been a collusion“Insisted Rubiales, who recalled that the contract received the approval of the ethics committee and the Compliance department of the federal entity.
Rubiales explained to the judge that, when he arrived at the RFEF, the Super Cup was of no interest to anyone and, thanks to the change in model, it now generates 40 million euros. When the format was changed from a single match to four participants, they received “a lot of calls” and were interested in Qatar, China, Russia or India, in addition to Saudi Arabia.
The first agreement with the Arabs was frustrated because they broke the confidentiality clause and then Piqué mediated to resume it and the RFEF got 40 million euros per year. “That money saved football because football in a pandemic would have died“he stressed.
Rubiales has assured that the then general secretary of the Federation, Andreu Camps, gave the go-ahead to play the Super Cup outside of Spain (before the transfer to Arabia it was already tested in Morocco), something for which permission was also requested from Fifa.
Regarding the works in the La Cartuja stadium in Seville, awarded to the company Gruconsa and also in the focus of the investigation, Rubiales explained that the RFEF, as a private entity, could hire whoever it wanted, although he indicated that they spoke with the Junta de Andalucía and asked them to contribute “some money” to refurbish the stadium.
He has defended that he submitted it to the economic committee and has alluded to a technical report from the events department that indicated that it had to be Gruconsa who carried out the works because it had already been entrusted in 2020 with a technical audit of the stadium’s deficiencies.
Rubiales has explained that if the RFEF had held a tender, a new company would have had to prepare that technical report and all the previous work that Gruconsa had already done, although he has indicated that the lawyer and advisor Tomás González Cueto, also investigated, He advised doing everything “just as the public procurement laws say to give maximum transparency.”
He has also indicated that when he left the RFEF he tried to enter the hotel business of his friend, the former soccer player Francisco Javier Martín Alcaide, Nene, who “knows the Dominican Republic very well.” “I don’t know about the business, he is the one who manages it,” he said, while he denied knowing if Gruconsa had business in the Caribbean country.
He met the Dismatec company – linked to his friend Nene and which would have allegedly received payments from Gruconsa – when the company Activities Nazaríes was established.
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