The Preamble of the current Code of Ethics of the Royal Spanish Football Federation states: “The RFEF, like FIFA, assumes the great responsibility of ensuring the integrity and reputation of football. For this reason, it constantly strives to protect the image of football, and above all its own, to prevent illegal, immoral or contrary to ethical methods and practices from tarnishing or harming it”. For its part, article 1 states that: “This Code shall apply to those conduct that may harm the reputation and integrity of football, particularly when it comes to illegal, immoral or unethical behavior & rdquor ;.
This was the regulation in force when the designation of Saudi Arabia as the venue for the Super Cup took place and in whose gestation took place the intermediation of Gerard Piqué’s company with the RFEF and the Saudi authorities. There are several legal, ethical and aesthetic aspects that this whole process raises and that would eventually violate the ethical principles that the RFEF proclaims to promote and protect. Regarding legal issues, specifically criminal ones, we will have to wait if any of the complaints that have been filed have any future, but I am afraid that they will end up in shambles, unless new facts appear that may qualify as criminal. The current ones don’t look like it.
On aesthetic questions, the tone of the conversations between the two protagonists may be understandable in a private context, but the expressions and the closeness that they reveal between the interlocutors do not exactly no favor to the image and reputation of the RFEF.
Discarded the legal and aesthetic questions, there remain those of an ethical nature, which are not exactly trivial since RFEF itself is precisely committed to them in the Code of Ethics that governs the institution, in which the aforementioned principles are collected, as well as the prohibition of the collection of illegal commissions, conflicts of interest, as well as the demands of transparency and equal treatment. All these principles, in the absence of a much more detailed examination, seem to be compromised by the performances of Rubiales and Piqué: Is it compatible to be a player of a club that participates in a competition and at the same time be a participant and beneficiary of its designation and financial endowment? Is it also if you have bought a club that belongs to the federation with whose president you have negotiated commercial agreements? Is it correct that a federative president consents to discriminatory treatment between the clubs that participate in the same competition? Did all the affected clubs know the economic distribution? Is it legitimate to take a competition to a country that does not respect human rights? Without examining whether these are all the relevant facts and whether or not these conducts fall within the illicit nature of the Code of Ethics, there is another question: can a federation react against its own leaders in the event of conduct that, while not being illegal, is contrary to to the values or norms of that? Could Piqué or Rubiales or both be sanctioned by said Code of Ethics? What is the scope of said code and of the body in charge of its application? The answer to these questions is crucial to confirm in a certain way the aforementioned “ethical” commitment; of the RFEF.
As far as the attitude of the RFEF regarding the Code is concerned, it is appropriate to remember that Rubiales’ accession to the presidency led to the appointment of a new Ethics Committee made up of three university professors from outside the world of football. A sign that seemed to endorse the purpose of moral regeneration that he had wielded in the electoral campaign and so necessary after the scandals that dotted the previous president, Ángel María Villar. The new members were asked to modify the 2015 Code of Ethics and thus adapt it to that of FIFA, since apart from other problems of legislative technique, it did not contemplate sanctions. In other words, it was an almost ornamental Code. And in fact, since its creation it had not been applied, leaving its work of ethical regeneration in complete suspense.
The approved version of 2019 complied with the requirement of the FIFA Code of Ethics that obliges national federations to adapt it and, in particular, to reproduce reprehensible conduct and its specific sanction. In other words, the Ethics Committee would have sanctioning powers, which included from fines to disqualifications. The new code was approved by the RFEF General Assembly in December 2019, when the Super Cup had already been assigned to Saudi Arabia.
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But that 2019 version has barely been in force for two years, well, For a few days there has been a new Code from which, once again, the sanctioning powers of the Ethics Committee have been eliminated. This can only make recommendations, whose effectiveness can be doubted.
In short, regardless of whether the conduct of the president and Piqué were considered by the current Ethics Committee to be infractions or not from a moral point of view, They would not be punishable because the applicable Code, the one in force at the time, did not contemplate them. But the serious thing is that having made a modification so that manifestly irregular behaviors could be punishable, the RFEF has decided to back down and leave them without sanctioning. The question that remains to be resolved is whether FIFA will exercise its powers to investigate what happened and for the RFEF to change its Code of Ethics again and make it similar to its own, and therefore, that behaviors such as kickbacks and conflicts of interest. By the way, if it were concluded that there was the latter, the sanction for those affected could go from a fine of €5,000 to a disqualification -for the position that has been held- of up to two years.