The dust raised as a result of the publication by The confidential of the audios of Piqué and Rubiales forced the president of the RFEF to appear before the media for around two hours to offer explanations on the matter. In addition to demanding that the focus be placed on how these audios have been obtained and insinuating without saying who is behind everything, Rubiales defended the legality of the contract and the benefits of the agreement, assured that it passed all the ethical filters of the Federation and denounced being “the victim of a hunt, distorting reality.” “Many things have been said and few or none are true. The management is clear, transparent, honest and beneficial for Spanish football,” said the Federation’s chief executive, who denied any type of illegality in the agreement and pointed out, according to his position, the falsehoods of what was published.
Commissions for Kosmos
Rubiales insisted throughout his appearance that the commissions to Kosmos, Piqué’s company that mediated in the agreement, were not paid by the Federation. “Kosmos proposes us a change of format in the Super Cup that I already proposed in the electoral campaign. They start working and we talk with the United States and Saudi Arabia, we talk with Qatar, China, India and some proposal came from Africa. Finally, when they come with a business possibility, they are told that they will not have the economic relationship with the negotiation. The RFEF does not pay a single euro of commission to anyone. I have not paid anything to Kosmos. Find out. The one who pays him is Saudi Arabia.” he claimed. Rubiales later admitted that he did intercede for Kosmos to collect the commission that had been agreed upon. “It’s standard practice,” he argued.
The alleged commission of Rubiales
The president of the Federation also denied having received any commission as a result of the agreement with Saudi Arabia and compared the structure of his salary with that of Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga: “I do not charge legal or illegal commissions. I have a salary structure that the treasurer proposed as a result of previous work and has an explanation. In Spain there are two models. We have the model that exists in LaLiga, where the president who receives €3.5 million euros, there is a large fixed salary and a small variable one. LaLiga negotiates the TV rights, but on its own resources it generates much less income than the Federation. The other model is that the fixed salary was lower and the variable was linked to management. In this way, the Federation was not chained to a large salary of 3,2 or 1. I feel well paid, but when I arrived the Federation generated more than 100 million and now it generates more than 400. If in the future they want to change, they will talk if you want me to change. It was a reason for honesty and not to chain the RFEF to a large salary. If the management was worse, so was the salary.”
conflict of interest
Rubiales also referred to the alleged conflict of interest in the operation, where Piqué, an active Barcelona footballer, participated decisively. “It seems that all the media say that the operation is legal. If everyone agrees that it is legal and we agree that it is legal… it is legal. Ethically, in the conflict of interest, look , everyone has their morals and ethics,” he argued. “Regarding Piqué, we have those responsible for good governance, who told us that if the relationship is between Arabia and Kosmos, you do not have to consult. Yes to me and Andreu (Andreu Camps, general secretary of the RFEF) they tell us that there is no conflict, it is that there is no conflict. Point and end. What do we talk about an ethical debate when the information has been taken from my mobile? That here I have photos with my daughters and conversations with my friends,” he defended himself.
The ethics committee
Along the same lines, Rubiales also denied that the agreement did not have the approval of the Ethics Committee and that he vetoed an internal report against the choice of Saudi Arabia as the venue: “In the RFEF we are not governed by ethics or by the president, we have three filters and we have passed all three filters. east half (The confidential) they lie when they say that they invite us not to go to Saudi Arabia. The ethics committee suggested we go and knew that we were working on social work. There were social clauses that attendance was the same as for men. Before there were no bathrooms even for women. The women entered in equality and sitting where they wanted. That was achieved by the RFEF. There are those who want to stain it by playing with the ambiguity that they would like to make it seem that there is what there is not. This is false”.
Rubiales also alluded to the information that accused him of violating FIFA’s code of ethics: “They have slipped the FIFA article that is similar to that of the Federation. They have manipulated the article by skewing the first two lines. They say that just what is prohibited is prohibited. it is allowed and this is not the situation of RFEF and Kosmos. The RFEF does not pay anything to Kosmos. The one who pays it is Saudi Arabia. This article is not applicable because there is no economic relationship. Be well aware of this. Another lie”.
The Qatari contract
In his presentation, Rubiales also dealt with the information that he had rejected a more advantageous agreement with Qatar that did not include commissions or penalties in the event that Madrid or Barcelona did not participate in the Super Cup: “Today the Qatar contract appears, false. We explained it (to El Confidencial) and he didn’t care about the truth. Don’t let a good article spoil you, More if it hurts. The Qatar contract, which is subject to a condition, is an agreement that would stay at about 30 million (the one from Arabia suppose 40) that it had to be validated by a body at a time and they did not validate it. The offer was not perfected.” Later, Andreu Camps, general secretary of the RFEF, expanded on the explanation: “There are two filters in that contract, which was not a contract, it was an agreement of intent that had to be ratified by Qatar and U.S. And Qatar did not validate it. The Qatari side had to meet a series of conditions to ratify it and did not want to. So that agreement never came into force. And besides, the Federation charged less, because the global amount was lower, and also did not include image rights in Asia, and there was also an obligation to pay a percentage to Qatar if we sold the rights in other parts of the world. The agreement with Arabia does not include the rights in Asia, nor the payment of that percentage for selling it in other markets. So the contract with Saudi was much better than the one with Qatar.”