Colombia: SIC reveals scheme and collusion to game ticket sales contract

The Colombian Football Federation (FCF) has been accused of handing over exclusive management of the sale, marketing and distribution of tickets for the qualifying games to the Russia 2018 World Cup to the Ticket Shop firm, in a process plagued by irregularities and now under investigation by the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC) of Colombia.

The company is said to have facilitated the detour for resale of some 42,221 tickets from 8 of the 9 elimination matches to the 2018 World Cup in Russia played by the Colombian National Team in the city of Barranquilla. This has prompted the SIC to file charges against the directors and partners of Ticket Shop and TicketYa, as well as the former director of the FCF Luis Bedoya and current president Ramón Jesurun.

The SIC’s investigation established that although the specifics of the selection process were published by the FCF from August 6, 2015, Rodrigo Rendón, partner of TicketYa, had informed Ticket Shop much earlier that “they had a very high percentage of probability, almost as a certainty, that the FCF would award them the contract they were contesting”.

The SIC points out that Rendón would have taken advantage of his relations with leaders, officials and members of the Executive Committee of the FCF, the Major Division of Colombian Professional Soccer (Dimayor) and the Amateur Division of Colombian Soccer (Difútbol) to obtain privileged information on the bidding process. For the SIC, the decision byt the Federation Committee, “was openly capricious and counter-evident to the background and the evaluations that the FCF itself had made of the different offers presented.”

Full Content: El Heraldo

Want more news? Subscribe to CPI’s free daily newsletter for more headlines and updates on antitrust developments around the world.