Laporta denounces false payments from the previous Board: “We do not want to be accomplices”

Joan Laporta has accused of making false payments to the previous Board of Directors of Barça. In a very harsh intervention during the presentation of the results of the Forensic investigation work, commissioned to analyze the financial situation of the club and scrutinize the possible irregularities in the management of Josep Maria Bartomeu, the president of Barça has indicated that the Due Diligence detected the existence of “payments without cause, others with false cause and others disproportionate”.

Said payments, Laporta has influenced, “showed disloyal conduct with the club’s assets and did not rule out an enrichment of those involved.” Hence, he recalled, the decision to put the facts in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office since, he stressed, Barça’s partners “have the right to know the facts that led to a situation of ruin.” “We do not want to be complicit,” he asserted.

Laporta has wanted to be cautious about the possibility that the previous directive put its hand in the box. “It is a very serious matter. I have not said that they have been unjustly enriched but that the Forensic does not rule out these behaviors. I’m not saying it, nor do I want to say it,” he said. Of course, he has declared himself “shocked” by the behaviors he has seen.

“We had an astronomical debt and sports contracts well above what is paid on the market,” Laporta stressed before Eduard Romeu, Barça’s economic vice president, went on to detail Barça’s economic situation, which is due to a debt of 1,300 million euros.

Romeu has accused Bartomeu of mortgaging Barça’s future with inflated contracts. «They keep saying that they are 558… The problem is when you immerse yourself and see concepts that are debts and are not recognized. To be simple: 389 million correspond to the salaries of different players who are in these growing contracts and said contracts that are charged for contract fulfillment. Fixed are disguised in variable concepts. This is cheating at solitaire. 170 million are from player ratings. There are overrated players. There are 80 million in litigation that we think will not be favorable, television, 40 million stadium subscribers, 56 million commitments with the city council for Espai Barça. All this, plus the balance, comes out the number we say. In recent seasons, Barça has lost more than 600 million euros. Of this, only 135 million are due to the pandemic,” he summarized.

Millionaire commissions

The economic vice president of Barça has explained that the main objective of the Laporta Board was to redirect the debt to give Barça “oxygen”, but it has made Bartomeu’s team ugly that reforms were not undertaken in the facilities to modernize the club. “Many things have been done wrong and what has not been done has also been done wrong,” he proclaimed. Faced with this lack of action, Romeu has valued the Espai Barça which, he has said, “will transform the club” and allow it to grow.

Laporta’s right-hand man in economic matters has explained that Barça had a wage bill 40% higher than that of its competitors, which reduces the room for maneuver in the market and forces contracts to be reviewed. “It is a very complex job: sit down with a player and explain the situation to him. It’s touching their pocket.” Despite this, it has revealed that in ten months it has managed to save 159 million euros.

“What I find worst about bad management is the wage bill, they had to be aware that it was skyrocketing and that it would be difficult to control,” said Laporta, who has focused on “millionaire amounts also from commissions that were out of market and are difficult to justify’. “From now on, we will facilitate the work of the Prosecutor’s Office, which investigates the alleged criminal actions and the people who commit them. We already imagined a very bad economic situation, but it is disastrous”, the Barça president has completed.

Laporta has stressed the difficulty of placing footballers on the market who do not count for Xavi Hernández because of the high emoluments they receive. “There are players who have interested clubs and when they see the salary, they back down,” he explained before referring to the situation of Ousmane Dembélé. “We made him a good offer. Even the player said so. Then he wanted a better proposal for him, higher. When we told him that it was good enough and that we wanted him to renew, the matter became entrenched, ”said Laporta, who has revealed that the Frenchman had two offers to leave that he did not accept. «We are very surprised and more so the last one, which was an English club. He has not wanted. He has preferred to stay here these six months. It is neither good for him nor for the club,” he stressed.