Euskaltel-Euskadi settles team bus transfer

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The riders and staff of the Euskaltel-Euskadi team are set to get paid their wages for the final two months of the year now that negotiations between the Fundación Ciclista Euskadi and the new management company Basque Cycling Pro Team (BCPT) and its sponsor Euskaltel S.A. have been settled.

The foundation agreed to transfer the assets including the team's buses, valued at €918,000, to the new organization in order to allow the salaries, unpaid from November, to be released to the team.

No details of the exact agreement were given in the dual announcements sent by the foundation and Euskaltel.

The Basque team was recently awarded a four-year WorldTour license by the UCI and granted entry into the sport's top tier for 2013. The team had been funded through the Basque foundation, but had to be overhauled for 2013 after the organisation suffered large budget cuts due to the Spanish financial crisis.

As part of the change, the team has decided to expand its ranks with riders from outside the region in order to garner the WorldTour license. But it was a move which came under criticism from some Basque riders who were not renewed.

Previously, Samuel Sanchez was the one of the only non-Basque rider on the team, but for 2013, manager Miguel Madariaga has recruited Slovakians Jure Kocjan and Robert Vrecer, Germans Steffen Radochla and Andre Schulz, Portugal's Ricardo Mestre, Moroccan Tarik Chaoufi, Greek rider Ioannis Tamouridis and Russian Alexandre Serebryakov.