The Former President And The Current CEO Of FC Barcelona Have Been Arrested!
The Former President And The Current CEO Of FC Barcelona Have Been Arrested! Former Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu has been arrested following a raid on the club’s offices. Barcelona’s CEO Oscar Grau and Roman Gómez Ponti, the club’s head of legal, were also arrested on the basis of unfair administration, corruption between individuals and money laundering.
According to Cadena SER radio, they were arrested on suspicion of “unfair administration, corruption between individuals and money laundering” after paying money in instalments to avoid internal financial controls. Dubbed ‘Barcagate’, it has been alleged that Bartomeu paid a third-party firm to smear both current and former players as well as presidential candidates on social media. Barcelona cut ties with I3 after claims that the firm set up Facebook accounts to bash the likes of Lionel Messi, Gerard Pique, Xavi Hernandez, former manager Pep Guardiola and presidential candidates Victor Font and Agusti Benedito.
An external audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers helped clear the club of any wrongdoing as they found out that the club did not pay an inflated price for any of I3’s services. Despite this audit, the local authorities continued investigating and conducting their own research since the beginning of 2020. Several raids have been conducted at Barcelona’s office ever since this story was revealed. According to Banoyi, police have confirmed that arrests have been made and while they aren’t declaring who, multiple sources in Spain have declared Bartomeu and Grau are among those, as well as Gomez Ponti and Jaume Masferrer, Bartomeu’s former right-hand man.
“Regarding the entry and search by the Catalan Police force this morning at the Camp Nou offices by order of the Instructing Court number 13 in Barcelona, which is in charge of the case relating to the contacting of monitoring services on social networks, FC Barcelona have offered up their full collaboration to the legal and police authorities to help make clear facts which are subject to investigation”, Barcelona’s official statement read.
