Budo international Martial Arts Magazine Jul.-Aug. 2014 | Page 242

which is what has enabled me to
have the lifestyle I’ve had and look
after my family.”
For many years, Antonio Espinós
has worked for Dragados y
Construcciones, running the Madrid
office before moving over to the firm’s
international department.
In the summer of 2013 a huge
problem erupted between you and the
person who until then had been your
closest colleague and even your friend,
George Yerolimpos from Greece, the
general secretary. Supposedly
Yerolimpos demanded explanations
from you for the work being done to
achieve Olympic status and you felt a
lack of confidence with him and so you
let him go. What happened? You’d
been together from the start, hadn’t
you?
“Yes. Right from the beginning. I
never thought that he was capable
of doing what he’s done, neither
personally nor professionally. For
several months he’d been doing
things that he’d never done before.
Taking decisions without consulting
me, ones that were not his to take….
I had to tell him that I didn’t think
what he was doing was right.
Everything started with a letter I
sent to the Executive Committee
(EC) to ask them how they felt about
us holding an extraordinary

congress at Guadalajara 2013 to
explain what had happened with
regard to the issue of Olympic
status. Every time there had been
an important IOC decision in the
past we’d always organised a
congress or a working breakfast. So
then he sent another letter to the EC
saying that what should happen at
Guadalajara was to bring forward
the elections for all officers. That
was clearly out of place. The
members of the EC responded by
saying that they were not at all keen
on the idea. He got nervous and
started to call people on the EC
telling them to urge me to resign.
And all this without even calling me.
Him, the general secretary, one of
the President’s closest collaborators
and holding that position on my
proposal. Nobody voted him in. In
late June I confirmed that there
would be no extraordinary congress
and he then got even more nervous
and sent a letter to the treasurer,
with copies to me and the EC,
demanding explanations of the
accounts and the contracts entered
into with a Spanish firm, which he
dismissed as incompetent, claiming
that the failure of our Olympic bid
was all down to them. He also said
that he'd asked to examine the
accounts on several occasions and

hadn’t been allowed to see them. All
lies, and anyway it’s not his role, as
the general secretary, to ask to see
the accounts. Then he sent a copy
of that letter to all the National
Federations in the WKF. I fired him
the following day.”
Which makes sense, given the loss
of trust between the two of you and
the fact that he was your general
secretary.
“Yes, of course, but even so I had
my doubts because it was such a
dramatic step to take. I think it was
the only option I had, and anything
else would have meant me leaving
first. He resisted, saying I didn’t
have the authority to do that, but
under the Statutes the president
elect proposes the appointments of
the general secretary and so on to
the EC for their approval, and they
also grant the power to call for such
an appointment to be revoked at any
time. There’s also an article that
empowers the president, in
emergency situations, to take
decisions attributed to the EC
provided that the EC ratifies them at
its next meeting. As if there could be
any more of an emergency situation
than that! He appealed to the
Lausanne court of arbitration
petitioning for provisional measures
to postpone the decision for a week