The Tenerife Sports Club Foundation allocated 438.062,83 euros to advertising, propaganda and public relations in a single season, according to the latest annual accounts of the blue and white institution, published today by the SER.
The investment in this heading multiplied by three the figure assigned the previous season to this same item (they were € 140,410.22 in the 2018/19 academic year).
The Foundation allocated a very high percentage of its budget to publicize its own activity and to establish generous agreements with friendly media with the management of Miguel Concepción at the head of CD Tenerife. So much so that the figure for propaganda and public relations exceeds that for personnel expenses (148,712 euros were in wages and salaries; and 65,139 in payments to social security paid by the company).
Accounting experts consulted by Radio Club Tenerife affirm that it is “at least striking” that the CD Tenerife Foundation can allocate more financial resources to publicize its activity than to some of its own initiatives. These include such laudable ideas as the creation of an EDI team (inclusive project for athletes with intellectual disabilities).
The non-profit organization is currently under the scrutiny of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Provincial Prosecutor’s Office. To a large extent due to its policy of agreements with the media, since in the justification of the first subsidy it received from the Government of the Canary Islands (that of 1.5 million euros) it was detected the annotation of a payment to a company from which Miguel Concepción himself is the owner. The Foundation blamed it on “a typing error”, but never presented the evidence to show where the figure for Canal 4 Tenerife went.
– Document that certifies that, in agreement reached with the Foundation, a communication medium undertakes to disseminate pieces and information generated by the Blue and White entity itself. / SER string
Recently, the Prosecutor’s Office chose to extend the proceedings and extend the period it has to decide whether to report possible irregularities committed by the Canary Islands Foundation of CD Tenerife. This entity has also made headlines due to the recent resignation of its project director, Urbano Medina, who was in charge at the time the controversial award of the money received by the Government of the Canary Islands was decided.
In various public interventions, the secretary of the Board of Trustees and spokesperson for the organization, Milagros Luis Brito, has admitted that the choice of the media in which the Foundation was advertised was done by hand, that is, without public competition or through the request of various budgets and / or proposals to companies in the sector. “With the same criteria that we choose the transport company that brings the children of Buenavista to us,” was his way of explaining his controversial communication policy, which is now surprising again due to a very large investment.
It should be remembered that in some of the agreements entered into by the Canarian Foundation of CD Tenerife with communication companies, “the medium undertook to disseminate, through its channels, pieces and information generated” by the communication office of the same. In other words, in certain cases they published certain information as if it were their own and without warning that it had been drawn up and produced by the club or its Foundation.
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