2023-07-29 08:00:26
Barcelona”The role of the board of directors [del FC Barcelona] in the bidding processes it is limited to approving the object and the amount, and in some cases the questions relating to the timings or the calendar in which the goods or services subject to the tender in question must be provided […] The criteria by which the specifications of the institution’s tenders are formalized respond to questions […] reflected in a text that is carried out jointly by the purchasing area with the area of the department involved in the project that requires the bidding process”.
This extract is part of the explanations that the area of compliance of Barça published a few weeks ago to explain the change of conditions that Limak favored in the concession of the works to remodel the Camp Nou. The Turkish construction company, which has been working on the partial demolition of the stadium for days and is already exploring ways to install hundreds of workers in Barcelona and the surrounding area for the bulk of the work, won a competition of almost 950 million euros (the highest in the entity’s history) without the managers approving the change in rules. Barça itself admits it.
Barça’s executive president, Joan Laporta, explained that Limak was selected because he ensured that he would comply with the works schedule and did not charge in advance the contingencies that do appear differentiated in a financing item. However, the company with its main headquarters in Istanbul would not have been chosen without the change of conditions that took effect at the beginning of September 2022. With the previous requirements, in force since 2017, it would have had nothing to do before the proposals of FCC or the UTE formed by Acciona and Ferrovial. He had never built a stadium with more than 40,000 seats, nor had he accredited two works in Spain with a budget exceeding 150 million, which were two of the premises that the awarded company had to fulfill according to the previous contract.
Coinciding with the modification of the bases for taking part in the competition to build the new Camp Nou, Ramón Ramírez, top manager of Espai Barça and who had joined the club to replace Bill Mannarelli, resigned from his duties. Main technical architect of the reformulation of the project after the arrival of Joan Laporta in the presidency, he jumped ship after the executives closest to the president insisted on the Limak route, which arrived at the entity around March of 2022, and the change of conditions. He didn’t agree with this strategy, he found himself cornered and decided to step aside. Before signing for Barça, Ramírez worked at IDOM, the company that redesigned the stadium. He now works with Jordi Llauradó, ex-director responsible for Espai Barça.
Memories of youth in Castelldefels
Regarding the organizational chart, the current manager of the project is Àlex Barbany. But in practice it is other workers who bear the real burden. Three people of the utmost confidence of Laporta, with whom they have had a personal relationship for decades and, in two of the cases, have shared professional projects. They are Joan Sentelles, César Martínez and Luis Moya, three friends of the president who have made and undone Espai Barça behind the board’s back, as the area of compliance of the entity. “They always go together, they are like a lot”, they say at the Camp Nou.
Sentelles, John for those in the know, he is Barça’s head of purchasing. In other words, the person responsible for the acquisition of goods and services, for searching and evaluating suppliers via bidding and for approving payments. He arrived at the offices in March 2022, coinciding with the first contacts between Limak and the club, already without a CEO because Ferran Reverter had folded a month and a half earlier. Sentelles, Laporta’s friend since their youth when they shared adventures in memorable summers in Castelldefels, had already worked at Barça during the final stretch of the current leader’s first term. An expert in the pharmaceutical business, his name is also associated with the disappearance of Reus Deportiu, of which he was a director between 2014 and 2019. “He is a very resolute thinker”, says a person who sees him at work every day. .
Catalan democracy and business in Uzbekistan
Martínez is Sentelles’ right-hand man in the purchasing area and also has the privilege of being considered a loyal and closely trusted figure of Laporta, who also recruited him for Barça in March 2022. They had previously shared a project in Democràcia Catalana, a political formation founded in 2010 by the current Barcelona president in which Martínez was treasurer. The party joined the coalition Solidaritat Catalana per la Independencia, which won four seats in the Catalan elections of the same year. But the link between Laporta and Martínez comes from before. In fact, according to the representative Bayram Tutumlu, who denounced the current leader for non-payment of an intermediation with Uzbekistan, Martínez collected 180,000 euros from the Asian country by virtue of a package of agreements that Laporta admitted in his judicial
For his part, Moya is a structural expert professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya who has recently joined the Espai Barça team. His work is essential to obtain the municipal works permits that must enable Limak to start building on the skeleton of the old Camp Nou, a requirement that is still pending. Laporta signed him in this second term as well as his cousin, Joan Moya, who is the head of technology of the entity and who, like Sentelles, also had a brief visit to the Barcelona offices during the final stretch of the first presidency of the Catalan lawyer in Arístides Maillol.
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