The members of the Coquimbo Tennis Club delivered an official letter with 9 points to the current leadership of their organization, in which they say they reveal a series of irregularities that are currently present within their facilities, situations ranging from the existence of two ruts different for the club, a current leadership whose validity has expired months ago and a paddle tennis court that organizes activities for profit … something against the current project.
The registration begins on April 28, 2017, when the Ministry of National Assets presented the exempt resolution No. E-4779, in which it was decided “Grant CLUB DE TENIS COQUIMBO, Rut N ° 65.101.657, the Free Use Concession of the fiscal property located in SECTOR PEÑUELAS (EX CLUB HIPICO)” according to the document.
There, Lot 1 (an area of 10,000 m2) was delivered to the club, in order to build a sports center for the training and recreational development of tennis and swimming, with work focused on vulnerable groups.
The partners are upset since they pay a monthly fee of 30,000 pesos each to occupy the premises, to the 71,315,000-2 rut, different from the one that appears in the project. They have tried to communicate with the current leadership for the last 3 months, without getting a response. In addition, elections should have been held on September 30, so its current leadership is not properly legalized or in force, which puts the project at risk before the National Institute of Sports.
“The beneficiary entity must allocate the fiscal property solely and exclusively for The project presented by the Coquimbo Tennis Club, which consists of the construction of a sports center for the training and recreational development of tennis and swimming, inspired mainly by integration of children, youth, adults, older adults and people with different capacities from vulnerable sectors and public schools ” information indicated in point b of the resolution, adding in point C that “The concessioned property may not be leased, delivered or transferred, under any title by the beneficiary entity”.
The existence of the Padel club puts the normal operation of the Tennis Club at risk, since within the project they applied for it was specified that they were strictly prohibited “Profit-making activities inside the enclosure” The “The use for purposes other than those specified”, leaving explicitly indicated as grounds for termination of the concession.
The situation is not unknown to the National Property Seremi, an institution that granted the Coquimbo Tennis Club a free use concession, first for one year but then extended for 5 more. They ensure that the president in question has already been informed of the situation and detail part of the process.
“As part of the work program of the Inspection area, in November 2020 a visit is made to the fiscal property, where the coexistence of a third user other than the beneficiary of the concession and its advertising located on the front of the property where The Padel del Mar is identified. Therefore, it is suggested after the audit, in a telematic meeting with the President of the Tennis Club, to determine the alternatives to continue adjusting to the original project or the steps to follow to modify part of the concession to a Onerous Use Concession, which allows the allocation of spaces to third parties, within the original project ”.
From the Seremi de Bienes Nacionales, they assured that after the audit carried out, President Omar Yáñez reported the surface that the Padel occupies and the space that will be for a future Events Room, which is why he was given the background information that he will need to modify the administrative act to request the concession of onerous use. Said application has not yet been formalized in the National Assets offices.
The President’s response
According to the Club’s authority, the Padel issue began to be settled on September 6, when he traveled to Santiago to meet with the Minister of National Assets.
“We raised the situation we had at the club with him. We believe that the Padel courts should pay a value according to the table that has national assets. They see what appraisal the land has in general. We bring you a map. Then the agreement was sealed there. That had to be corroborated by the local authorities, because here is the technical department ”.
He affirms that it is already authorized from Santiago and that at the end of November the regional authorities had to meet to see if they agreed with what was established in the capital. At the end of December it could be signed after some paperwork.
For him, the project has always had detractors, from the president of a tennis association to the club members themselves, who according to Yañez “They did not want something new and they are not very interested in inclusion.”
Question: When did the paddle begin … did you know that it was breaking the law according to national property?
“We never gave the contract. There is no contract involved. Only in word … “
Question: Does that seem normal to you? That there is no contract for such an activity in the club?
“It is that we should have administered it ourselves, that may be the crime.”
The people chosen at that time were all “first level players” as Yañez points out, with athletes who have traveled to different countries for Padel competitions, among them Rodrigo Silva, Carlos Zari, Ian Walker and Sebastián Muñoz.
“It was a thing of fate. We didn’t have good management before, tennis was bad. I thought that if we added a sport that they don’t know, how do we manage it? Then we saw them deliver, because we cannot make a contract to give them the place, that they exploit it and at the end of 48 months, the fields remain for us ”.
Yañez assures that now the situation of Padel is being regularized, that in the next few days the link that was once only verbal will be legally written, for which he says he consulted authorities in order to ensure the club. The courts were inaugurated in 2019 before the venue itself.
“I acknowledge my mistakes. We shouldn’t have given the courts to first-rate players to work on while we put together the whole story. That was the first because it was the easiest. If we had sat down and seen who could have done it, who administered it, that might be the main mistake, but the authorities I think they understood it ”.
The lack of meetings, expired leadership, the 2 different ruts and the labor inspection
Another thing that he recognizes is the lack of regular meetings, which he says they have not been held normally for almost 15 years, and that only exist when a project is going to be carried out.
Indeed, the club’s board of directors expired on September 30. However, Yañez points out that there was already an agreement to continue for a couple of more years, a process that had not been formalized.
“There is an act, where the same ones who claim are, in 2019 they qualify us and leave us until 2023. The same ones who are claiming. What we had to do was call 2 directors, hold a meeting between the three of them so that the other 2 could take over, and the IND is taken to update itself, that is missing ”.
According to the current president of the Coquimbo Tennis Club, he already communicated to the members in the month of November and through a letter, that once the loan procedures were completed, he would leave his position. For this situation, he estimates that it would be March or April, after the 90-day deadline for calling elections.
“I already sent the letter. We want to sign the agreement that we achieved with effort, with money from my pocket to go to Santiago and all the movement, and I want to sign it, the final loan. Till March. It is no longer worth it. Keep it tidy, because we are leaving millions in cash and that those who come later will also perform ”.
Regarding the existence of two different routs for the club, Yañez points out that it was a measure that should have been carried out after discovering that they were unable to request resources, after the blocking of the previous rout for not paying money to the Municipality of Coquimbo , in a previous administration.
“That of the two of them was very simple, for me to explain it to them in the letter I sent them. That rut, for not knowing how to handle when money is received from the state or municipality, which has to pay, when we saw the possibility of the land, we were checking our rut and it turned out that we were blocked in the municipality and everywhere, because old directives were not they yielded 5 million that the municipality spent for a child who went to compete outside. We could never clarify it, we asked the father, the mother, the child, who we could, we called the airline and there was no case. We couldn’t ask for money anywhere because we were blocked ”.
Regarding the presence of the Labor Inspection in the club, Yañez stated that it is due purely and exclusively to a person who was working without having signed his or her employment contract.
“It was a problem in the administration. A boy came in in November, there was the contract and I did not sign, and they did not inform me. There were the papers, everything ”.
The president points out that this person would have some communication problems. He is paid 600,000 thousand liquid pesos, working on the care and maintenance of the fields. He assures that he hopes to continue hiring people with disabilities, as part of the inclusion work that is carried out in the club, which only a few days ago had the presence of the Seremi del Deporte, Juan Carlos Fritis, in the framework of other activities.
The key meeting this Saturday
For this November 18, a meeting is scheduled where Yañez intends to expose in detail the economic situation and the expenses and income of the Club, an instance where he hopes that the people behind the accusations will show their faces.
