FC Barcelona official announcement

FC Barcelona wants to refute the story published today, Monday 23 January 2023 in El Confidencial titled: “Laporta broke the Barça rules to award the Camp Nou work to the Turkish company Limak.”

Specifically, FC Barcelona wishes to make the following assessments and corrections of the published content:

1. “The tender contract prevented such a company from bidding” FALSE

There is no tender contract as such, instead within the tender procedure there is a pre-qualification phase and another phase for sending the bid specifications. Those terms and conditions sent on 1 September 2022 allowed all the participating companies to submit applications to the tender, as they all met the latest pre-qualification criteria established by FC Barcelona.

The bid specifications for the restructuring work on the Spotify Camp Nou were announced to all the companies that submitted bids and were effective date from 1 September 2022. The terms and conditions set forth therein established no requirement for bidding companies to have built a football stadium with more than 40,000 seats or two constructions in Spain.

Prior to this bidding process, there was a process that commenced in 2017, and which was cancelled in December 2020 by means of an official communication on the FC Barcelona Supplier Portal to all participating companies at that time. It was not until September 2022 when the new bidding process began, the outcome of which was for the project to be awarded to LIMAK as the best rated company.   

.2. “Joan Laporta awarded the Camp Nou work to the Turkish construction company Limak, bypassing the the terms and conditions of the bid specifications that FC Barcelona had announced at the start of the tender” FALSE

There was no breach of the terms and conditions las these were associated to the new tender process, which is dated from 1 September 2022.

.3. “With the admission criteria marked out in the prequalification process for companies that the Club establishes and to which El Confidencial has had access, it is not that Limak could not win, it is that they could not even apply” FALSE 

The prequalification to which reference is made is based on documents from 2017 that formed part of the tender process for the construction of the stadium under the previous project, under the previous board of directors. With regards to this previous process, a statement was sent via the Supplier Portal on 17 December 2020 to all the companies involved in which it was set out that the process was to be postponed until after the election of a new Board of Directors and when there was news of the tender process it would be made to reach those involved. The tender process was reactivated in September 2022, at which time the conditions were sent to all participating companies, inviting them to present their bids. 

Furthermore, since 2017 FC Barcelona has been informing the different companies of new requirements and updated information for them to have at their disposal updated information regarding financial matters and modifications to the New Spotify Camp Nou project. That is to say, in agreement with the final requirements for prequalification as set out in the terms and conditions on 1 September 2022, all the companies taking part were able to participate in the process. 

.4. “The construction company Limak does not meet the requirements set out by FC Barcelona itself. On page 7 of the document the motives for non-qualification are made clear as a participant in the process and amongst those can be found the following: Those companies (Temporary Union of Companies) that do not present references that accredit the construction of a stadium holding more than 40,000 spectators in the last 10 years and those companies (Temporary Union of Companies) that do not present two references of buildings constructed in Spain whose Budget for Materials and Labour (PEM) has been greater than 150 million euros in the last 10 years” FALSE 

As we have set out previously, the document referred to is for prequalification that began in 2017, and in no way corresponds to the requisites in the conditions laid down on 1 September 2022. 

.5. “This blatant failure to comply will make it difficult to obtain the building licence from Barcelona City Council for a key piece of infrastructure for the city, according to sources from the construction industry” FALSE 

The process of obtaining a building licence from Barcelona City Council is totally independent from the adjudication process for the company to carry out the construction. 

In no way is the building licence at risk because the name on the licence is that of FC Barcelona as the initiator of the construction, not the construction company.