- 1,612
- 9
- 38
The management of the Barcelona Club claimed that Josep Maria Bartomeu, who was the club president between 2014 and 2020, and former managers were responsible for the debt of 1.3 billion euros.
Barcelona President Joan Laporta held a press conference with the members of the club's board of directors responsible for economic and legal affairs, and announced that they submitted a criminal complaint against former president Bartomeu and the board of directors, alleging that they used the club's budget unjustly and for profit, to the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office.
President Laporta said, "We predicted that the economic situation would be bad when we took office, but there is a disaster beyond our expectations. We agreed with the Deloitte company and asked them to analyze some suspicious operations in depth and make due diligence. Overpayments were made. We presented the evidence to the prosecutor's office. From now on, the prosecutor's office We should facilitate the investigation. The prosecution will reveal those responsible." said.
Defending that club members have the right to know the economic facts in Barcelona, Laporta claimed that "disproportionate, fake and unjustified payments were made" during the Bartomeu period. Laporta also said that when other clubs interested in their players heard about the salaries, they immediately changed their minds.
Eduard Romeu, the Catalan club's vice-president and board member for economic affairs, also argued that in the past administration they "pay the bills for things done poorly or not at all".
Romeu noted that the club currently owes 1.3 billion euros, of which 389 million euros is in athletes' salaries.
"We have lost 600 million euros in the last two seasons, and 135 million euros of this is due to the restrictions brought by the Kovid-19 epidemic," said Romeu.
"There was also a period when football players' salaries were higher than club revenues. We saved 27 million euros in finance costs. For expenditures, we have 40 percent higher wages than our competitors. There are contracts signed and it's a mixed situation. We made a savings. The overheads are also examined point by point and 25 million savings have been made so far. Serious work is being done to reduce expenditures, but of course there is a limit to everything."