Police make arrests in raid at Barcelona football club

Posted By : Telegraf
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Police raided Barcelona football club on Monday, reportedly arresting the club’s former president, its chief executive and its top lawyer as the soccer behemoth’s travails escalated into a full blown crisis.

According to Spanish media reports, police detained Josep Maria Bartomeu, who resigned as FC Barcelona’s president in October, Oscar Grau, the club’s CEO, and Roman Gómez Ponti, general counsel. 

The club said it offered its “full collaboration to the legal and police authorities to help make clear facts which are subject to investigation”. It added that it had “great respect for the judicial process in place and for the principle of presumed innocence for the people affected within the remit of this investigation”. 

The probe is in connection with what the Spanish media dubs Barçagate — allegations, denied by the club, that it corruptly hired outside groups to defame Bartomeu’s adversaries on Facebook.

The raid and the arrests come as Barcelona, the world’s highest-earning football club, is struggling to regain its footing. 

Bartomeu resigned after a breakdown in relations with star player Lionel Messi, a series of indifferent results on the pitch and a financial crisis off it, with the pandemic plunging the club into a €100m loss last year and an urgent need to deal with a rising debt pile of more than €1bn. 

Revelations last month in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo about Messi’s hugely lucrative contract — worth more than €555m over four years — caused further ructions at the club with the Argentine player remaining uncommitted to his future beyond this season.

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The club confirmed Monday’s police raid — the second since July — while declining to confirm any arrests. Local police confirmed that arrests had been made, but did not confirm any names.

No charges have been made and Bartomeu, the club, and other individuals in the case, which is being investigated by a Barcelona court, have all denied any wrongdoing.

The three men and a further person who was reportedly arrested could not be reached for comment.

The election to replace Bartomeu, with the club’s 140,000-strong membership voting on his successor, is due to take place on Sunday.

“Too many people want to hurt Barça,” Toni Freixa, one of the three candidates for the post, wrote on Twitter after the raid. “We will not permit it.”

In July the club issued a formal statement, based on a report carried out by PwC, saying it had contracted “various services related to monitoring and analysis of social networks [that] did not include any defamatory campaigns directed at third parties”, and that no corrupt behaviour took place related to the contracts, which totalled €1.1m for the 2017-18 season and €947,700 for each of the following two seasons.

The contracting process was instigated by Bartomeu, managed by Grau and legally endorsed by Gómez Ponti.

The PwC report found that “some of the suppliers . . . have the same registered office, their corporate purposes not being related to the purpose of the contracted service, they have a small number of employees or they do not have a website”. 

The PwC report said the overall purpose of the contracts was to inform the club of the “conversation” on social media so that it could “establish a communication strategy . . . that would allow the club to preserve its reputation and interests”.

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It added that it could not “verify the effective provision” of services for an amount of €37,000 billed by one of the contractors for an additional order “for which a contract was not signed and did not go through any contracting process and/or receive any authorisation”.

In the wake of the PwC report, the club’s board said in July it would “if necessary, bring the relevant legal action against those who have made false and unfounded accusations that have gravely damaged the institution’s image and those who form part of it”.

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