Juanjo Isern, presidential candidate in the last elections of the Catalan Football Federation, has harshly criticized Joan Soteras, current president of the organization, after the registration that took place yesterday morning at the Federation offices. The former candidate, in a statement entitled Enough is enough, pointed out that this “is the largest and most regrettable case of electoral corruption in the history of Catalan sport.”
The investigative court 2 of Sabadell, after receiving the complaint from several clubs, ordered to search the headquarters of the Federation to investigate whether Soteras and his collaborators falsified notarial acts to delegate the vote in their favor in the February 2023 elections.
Isern, candidate in those elections, issued a statement this morning in which he attacked Soteras’ mandate. “We express the utmost displeasure with the negligent management of the Catalan Football Federation developed so far and which during the last two years has meant experiencing and seeing some sadly unusual events in Catalan sport,” the letter reveals.
Likewise, the former candidate has assured that Soteras committed irregularities in the elections, both in May 2022 and in February 2023, both won by the current president. “After almost two years since the first elections for the presidency of the Catalan Football Federation, we have had to see how the Catalan Sports Court forced the elections to be repeated as a result of irregularities in the census and in the casting of votes. Furthermore , we have had to accept how Mr. Soteras participated in a second election, incurring incomprehensibility,” the statement emphasizes.
Juanjo Isern has also pointed out that, despite the complaints from the Generalitat, Joan Soteras has continued in his position with complete normality. “We have had to suffer how Mr. Soteras failed to comply with the orders of the Catalan Sports Court to be dismissed from his position; we have had to see how the Government of the Generalitat and the Plenary of the Parliament of Catalonia disapproved of Mr. Soteras as President of the Federation “We have also seen how the Generalitat’s lawyers defended before the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia that Mr. Soteras and his team disobeyed the Catalan Sports Court,” the former candidate reveals in the statement.
For Isern, the accusation of Soteras, along with six other people, is the last straw. The former candidate calls for “dignifying Catalan football and the most resounding condemnation of those who negligently use the Catalan Football Federation to obtain their own personal and professional benefits.”
