Barcelona President Joan Laporta is embroiled in a authorized battle over the ‘Reus case‘, and a documentary centered on the matter has solely forged additional aspersions on his dealing with each of the case, and his administration of Barcelona. Laporta has confronted accusations of appointing these with private hyperlinks to him to positions on the membership moderately than on benefit, and accusations within the documentary definitely speaks to these.
The Reus case centres round Laporta and fellow Barcelona administrators (once they weren’t in workplace) Joan Olive, Rafa Yuste and Xavier Sala i Marti, who’ve confronted 5 authorized complaints accusing them of a rip-off. The deal in query concerned investing in an organization (Core Retailer), on the promise of a return on funding, which in flip acquired 53% of Reus. The Catalan membership, situated an hour down the coast from Barcelona, was wound up in 2019, and not one of the buyers obtained their a reimbursement.
Within the documentary, as detailed by Relevo, sisters Paula and Carmen Tartas who invested in Core Retailer had been recorded with out their data talking about what that they had been informed by middleman Sandra Sole, who sought out their funding initially. They seem to counsel that Laporta had supplied a few of the buyers who didn’t get their a reimbursement jobs at Barcelona with the intention to keep away from authorized motion.
“He informed us we had been going to receives a commission anyway. I’ll inform Barca to rent you. Everybody at Barca is concerned there: his spouse, his son, his brother, his cousin… You may be there too. It appeared like a Mercadona, however for soccer, with 3,000 folks. That’s what they gave Toni Cruz as compensation for the funding…”
Barça had their eyes on Desiré Doué final summer time as a backup plan when the Nico Williams deal received sophisticated. Deco was a giant fan of the French winger, however Monetary Truthful Play guidelines made the switch unimaginable. @joaquimpiera pic.twitter.com/JQxK8R7yPo
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“You don’t need to work; it’s a contract, they usually’ll pay you.” Their brother, who additionally invested €50k, on high of the €400k invested by his siblings, is an artist they usually declare “they supplied to purchase his work for the value of the debt, and that Barcelona would purchase them.”
The aforementioned Toni Cruz, one of many buyers in Core Retailer, is now a director at Barca One, whereas Laporta has acknowledged in courtroom that he did make use of Sole to hunt out buyers for Core Retailer. Laporta has up to now denied accusations of fraud although, and the case continues to be ongoing. Additionally it is not clear what energy Laporta needed to make hiring decisions on the membership, given he was not on the membership on the time.