Radio Searle exposed the Camp Nou stadium bidding scandal: the winning bidder had the worst performance during the review stage

The completion date of the Camp Nou stadium has been delayed again and again, and Radio SER revealed some inside stories and scandals during the bidding process of the project.

Turkish construction company Limak performed the worst during the bidding process for the Nou Camp stadium renovation project, but eventually won the bid after the bidding rules were changed, according to Ser Radio. The incident has caused endless confusion for Barça and its members, especially for the management, whose performance in selecting contractors has been called into question.

According to Radio Ser's disclosure, Limak's plan was suspended during the initial technical evaluation stage by a review committee composed of representatives of Barcelona members and construction experts who never considered the Turkish company to be the best choice to complete the project.

However, despite these unfavorable reviews, Limak was selected as the winning bidder. A few days later, Jordi Lalardo, the director responsible for the Camp Nou renovation project, suddenly resigned without any explanation.

According to a large number of documents provided by Radio Ser, Limac did not submit a bid application until after the bidding deadline, and the company did not officially join the bid until the chairman of Barcelona met with the company's president at a match in Istanbul.

At this time, the materials submitted by Limac did not meet some basic requirements set by former Barcelona chairman Bartomeu, such as a stadium that must have been built in Europe that can accommodate at least 25,000 spectators.

In addition, Limac’s initial proposal did not meet Barcelona’s requirements for the construction period, nor did it form a temporary consortium with other Catalan companies to participate in the bidding. To overcome these problems, Catalan companies such as Torroella Ingeniería-Arquitectura and JG Ingenieros later joined the project.

Nevertheless, Limac ultimately won the project because at the last moment, the bidding conditions for the stadium construction project were modified to suit the characteristics of the Turkish company. In the end, Limak beat the second place by 16 points. The 16 points came mainly from its promise to complete the project in record time, which it failed to deliver.

It is worth mentioning that Barcelona Vice President Maria Elena once said that if the project is delayed, the contractor will pay a fine of 1 million euros per day. Calculated according to this standard, Limac should pay Barcelona approximately 300 million euros in compensation. However, the club has neither made a claim nor intends to do so, citing reasons for the delay including administrative formalities with the Barcelona municipality and "force majeure" factors such as rising prices for construction materials and delays in the supply of construction materials due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

However, according to the terms of the contract obtained by Radio Searle, even delays in the delivery of construction materials do not constitute force majeure. Faced with this situation, Barcelona decided to speed up the progress of the project and hire other construction companies to undertake part of the work. For example, the construction of the dressing rooms at Camp Nou was undertaken by a non-Limac company.