The Sports Administrative Court (TAD) has opened a file for very serious infringement against the president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, for publishing information about Barcelona’s VIP boxes last April, and EL PAÍS has confirmed. The decision comes after the Higher Sports Council (CSD) submitted to the organization on October 20 a complaint from a member of the Barça club and the president of the Transparency in Sports association, against the boss of the employers’ association. Another 17 subscribers of the entity chaired by Joan Laporta joined it.
By opening the file, the TAD now has to clarify whether the regulations were breached by disclosing information and data that the Barça club sent to the employers’ association in compliance with the rules for preparing the budgets of sports clubs and public limited sports companies (SAD). The publication of this data, according to the organization, may constitute a very serious violation of article 76.2a of the Sports Law. The sanctions for the alleged misconduct are dismissal from office, temporary disqualification of two months to one year or a public reprimand.
According to the complainants, the statement published on the employer’s website revealed financial data that is subject to the duty of confidentiality referred to in article 5 of the rules for preparing LaLiga budgets. This point states that “the information, data and documents that the clubs/SADs provide to LaLiga in compliance with these rules will be confidential and will be subject to the regulations on data protection, without prejudice to the obligations arising from the information requirements of the judicial and administrative bodies.”
After Barça’s complaint, the employers removed the information from their website. The text was posted LaLiga and Barcelona exchanged a series of statements. The organization stated on April 2 that the Barça club was failing to comply with the fair play financial and that coming from the sale of 475 VIP seats at the Camp Nou.
Five days later, Barça responded with another text in which they accused Tebas of breaching the duty of confidentiality. The entity chaired by Laporta assured that it had not given permission for the data to be published, so LaLiga deleted the statement from the website and the rest of the official channels “In relation to the note published by FC Barcelona, LALIGA wishes to express its total disagreement with the accusation relating to an alleged violation of the duty of confidentiality due to the dissemination, by this institution, of the press release to which FC Barcelona refers.” More than seven months later, the TAD has opened a disciplinary file to determine whether Tebas violated the regulations or not.
