ESPN: Barca have lost 600 million euros in the last two seasons, of which only 135 million has been spent on the new crown

According to ESPN, Barcelona president Laporta confirmed that the club's former board may face criminal charges of misappropriation of funds and falsification.

Laporta said a third-party investigation into the club's finances revealed that the former board, chaired by former chairman Bartomeu, paid unreasonable fees to journalists and lawyers and paid more than 30 percent commissions to some brokers, compared with the industry standard of around 5 percent. Barca estimates that all of this is paid to the club for around €30 million, which Laporta suggests also needs to be investigated.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, Laporta said: "Members have a right to know what caused the club's devastation. Third-party investigative agencies have identified a series of operations that are quite economically unreasonable. ”

"When this overwhelming mismanagement proposal is presented, the criminal justice system comes forward to ask for investigation and clarification of any possible illegal misappropriation or abuse." Laporta did not elaborate on the specific case details, but said there was a suspicious sum paid to a lawyer through a player who used it to cover up the deal. Payments to third parties are also broken down into smaller amounts to avoid detection.

In March 2021, Laporta succeeded Bartomeu and returned to Barca for the second time as president. He leads a club that is heavily indebted, although Barca were still able to sign Felan Torres from Manchester City for €55m in January. Sources told ESPN that Dortmund's Haaland is also still a target for Barca's summer, with Laporta saying: "We're not going to pay too much commission to bring in a player. ”

"There have been times in the past when you wanted to bring in a player and you had to pay a certain commission. But if we do, we're not going to hide it. We will explain all this in a completely transparent way. We will not allow such behavior again - a transfer cost only 17 million euros, and later we found out that 40 million euros were given to the player's father, and the total transaction was close to 100 million euros. ”

Speaking with Laporta, the vice-president confirmed that Bartomeu had left the club with €1.35 billion in debt, with losses totalling €600 million over the past few years, of which only €135 million was related to COVID-19. The vice-president also said that Barça's players are currently paid 40% higher than their rivals.

Barca have managed to remove €159 million from their salary bills since LaPorta took office 10 months ago, and on the Dembeled issue, Laporta said: "We offered him a new contract, it was a good offer, but in the end, he wanted a better offer. We told him that by our standards, we thought the offer was good enough. ”

"His agent has been silent and we did everything we could to help him leave. But he'd rather stay, it doesn't make sense, it's not good for him or the club, he's still training in the squad. ”

"At the moment we believe he has reached an agreement with another club, which is what his agent hinted at us."

(Bear & Raspberry)