González de Castro and the changes in the statutes: “Don’t let strange intentions be seen, we are always transparent”

«We had a pending task because our statutes are basically the initial ones drawn up in 1992. The legislation has changed a lot and several articles have remained obsolete or contrary to current legislation. It is a job that had to be undertaken, without a doubt,” clarified González de Castro, who insisted on this idea: “Adaptation is necessary. What the shareholders have to be clear about is that we adapt to the legality and the real operations of the club, that there will be transparency. It is not a political strategy but a long-awaited demand from the legal areawhich I represent. They are anachronisms that must be corrected. Of course it has nothing to do with hiding information, there will always be transparency as this council has done. It is a technicality from the legal area, that we are the promoters of this change.”

And he insisted: «It is an issue that, I can prove, I have been putting on the table for years. And it is done now because it is the first meeting in which we have not had additional problems. It is a long topic and there are more than 20 articles. One or two attract attention but there are many. Some are due to errors carried out, others adapted to the regulations. In this case, I have been asking to change this for years but we have not had a calm meeting to address it. In the others there have always been urgent issues that take up time and the urgent never lets the important things get done. We need to polish and brighten the statutes.”

In reference to the specific articles, González de Castro pointed out that regarding the deletion of the 8, which indicates that “only natural persons of Spanish nationality, public legal entities, Savings Banks and Spanish Entities may be shareholders of the company. of a similar nature and purposes, and private legal entities of Spanish nationality or companies in whose capital the foreign participation does not exceed 25% and whose members, due to the rules by which they are governed, are fully identified”, the club justifies it this way. «We eliminate those limitations that are no longer in accordance with the law. In fact, they are contrary. Neither the EU Treaty nor all Community legislation allows these limitations. This specific article is a direct transposition of the 1990 Sports Law, which has been modified twice and we, due to lack of diligence or whatever, have not adapted the statutory regulations, which cannot go against of the imperative nature of the general rule. It’s about adapting to the current legislative framework,” he noted.

Regarding article 31, which refers to the approval of the budget, González de Castro stated that “the obligation for it to be approved at a meeting comes from when Betis, instead of being a sports corporation, was an association of people. It dragged because the accounting of the clubs is budgetary and not that of a commercial company. We have a fiscal year that begins on July 1 and closes on June 30. When we presented the budget for board approval in December, it had been executed in more than 50%. Many are extraordinary resources that are generated in the summer. It is a post-supposition. It’s absurd. LaLiga forces us to present it in April for the season. We are bordering on irregularity. We executed a budget sent to LaLiga and that we have not approved by the board. It’s absurd. It is a transfer of a rule that made sense when the clubs were associations of people and not commercial companies,” he stated.

«This in no way means that there is opacity. I publicly assume the commitment that there is the same information but with an informative nature. Information as much as you want and transparency. Shareholders have accounting control through the approval of accounts. It is a matter of being rigorous with compliance with the standard. It will be the shareholders who vote for it but for me there is little discussion. Let no strange intentions be seen. The budgetary obligation belongs to associations, not commercial companies,” he stated.

And he added more argument: «The budget is the point of least interventions in the meetings because deep down everyone knows that with the fiscal year from July to June, more than 50% has already been consumed. And we have to send it previously without having it approved. Transparency and information, all in the world. This is not an issue of concealment or diminishing the powers of the board, but of adapting the accounting reality to the reality of the economic life of the club.”