23.01.2014 - 16:03
Barça is again going through tough times due to a new scandal that implicates its president, Sandro Rosell. Some news items published in the last few days indicate that the transfer fees involved in signing Neymar had a much larger price tag than the club announced on making the agreement. The Neymar case is now in the hands of the Spanish National Court and nothing indicates that it will be resolved any time soon. Judge Pablo Ruz has agreed to hear the suit presented by Barça member Jordi Cases for the supposed extra unaccounted for amount added to the transfer fee for the Brazilian player; a suit that could end up involving vice-presidents Bartomeu and Faus.
The crisis evolving from this case has led Rosell to resign. Today there have been a series of urgent meetings among the leaders of the club and he is expected to resign this afternoon. The resignation is not only because of this particular case, but for the accumulation of controversies and scandals that have surrounded his presidency. We review them in this article.
Business and legal investigations in Brazil
In the midst of the campaign, but before being elected as Barça’s president, it came out that Rosell had been under investigation in Brazil for having illegally benefited from a non-bid contract and from having used fradulent documentation in order to organize a game with the Brazilian national side. Rosell earned nine million Brazilian reals in public monies and a year ago the public prosecutor in Brasilia was asking for an 8 year prison sentence for the Barça president.
Rosell’s company, Ailanto Marketing, received nine million Brazilian reals—about 4 million euros or $3.8 million—for having organized a friendly in 2008 between the Brazilian and Portuguese sides for the re-inauguration of Brasilia’s stadium, Bezerrao. At that time, the governor of the Federal District was José Roberto Arruda, who has since been dismissed and imprisoned on corruption charges.
After noting evidence of overbilling and diversion of public funds to the party’s organization, in 2010, the civil police force in Brasilia opened an investigation that is still ongoing in federal district court.
Ricardo Teixeira, the former president of the Brazilian Football Confederation, insisted at all times that his organization had no ties with Ailanto and he said that he couldn’t offer any documentation on the facts under investigation because the party’s organization was the responsibility of the business. According to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo, Ailanto was contracted by the Brazilian government without going through the bid process.
The case of the money-laundering airplane
In addition to the case involving the organization of the friendly, Rosell was also implicated in a money laundering case. The Brazilian police called Ricardo Teixeira, president of the Brazilian Football Confederation, to testify at the end of 2011, because he was involved in the repeated sale of a small aircraft to Sandro Rosell and Cláudio Honigman (Rosell’s partner in the Brazilian company 100% Marketing) in order to launder money. The Brazilian press published an investigation on the purchase-and-sale of this small airplane.
According to the reports, the Brazilian aviation company TAM sold Teixeira a private plane. Part of the price of the plane was to be satisifed with a small Cessna PT-XIB plane, that Teixeira said was his, but which belonged to TAM and which had entered the country at a cost of a single dollar. This strange price made the police suspicious, especially since the small plane had been sold many times between businesess in which Teixeira, Sandro Rosell, and Cláudio Honigman all owned a part, until it went over market price. Finally, the plane was purchased by a TAM leader involved in negotiating the source of a sponsorship contract with the Brazilian Federation of Football.
Pending accounts with the former board
Another factor involved that has destabilized the club during these first years of Rosell’s term is the legal proceedings involving the disagreements with former president Joan Laporta’s board. Rosell’s board’s first priority from the start was to distance itself from Laporta’s work at the club. For example, Rosell’s first symbolic gesture upon taking office as president was an official visit in July 2010 to the President of Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara. A few months earlier, the Extremaduran leader and Laporta had had a heated, insult-laden discussion via telephone. During the visit, Rosell spoke glowingly of the Extremaduran President and famously remarked, ‘If you want to eat the best bread with tomato [Catalan specialty] with ham [Extremaduran specialty] in the world, you have to serve Catalan bread with tomato with ham from Extremadura.’
The most significant consequence of this desire to distance himself from the previous board were the charges brought against Laporta and his board over the case of the club’s guarantees and economic losses. Rosell, who has never taken responsibility for being behind the accusations, allowed third parties known to his board to present the accusations. In addition, Rosell brought a claim of liability against Laporta’s board to the first delegates meeting. In that meeting, Rosell fiercely attacked the economic management of the earlier board but found a way to stay on the sidelines: he presented the arguments both in favor of and against finding Laporta’s board legally and economically liable. He didn’t give his personal position one way or the other, and ended up voting in blank. The assembly of delegates approved filing the suit with a vote of 468 in favor to 439 against.
Disagreements and Guardiola’s departure
This thirst for revenge on the former board had serious consequences on Rosell’s relationship and his team with the club’s coach at the time, Pep Guardiola. Guardiola had had an excellent relationship with Laporta, Johan Cruyff, and Txiki Beguiristain. The latter two were pushed out of the team shortly after Rosell assumed the presidency. And Guardiola’s first season began relatively normally, but as time progressed, the underlying conflict between Rosell and Guardiola over the management of the club became more and more clear.
The tension came to a climax when Guardiola publicly defended Laporta’s board in a press conference at the club. A question on his opinion of the board’s bringing Laporta to trail over a supposedly faulty management instigating declarations by Guardiola in which he displayed his discomfort with the situation, which he said was bad for the team. Guardiola invited circumspection since the nuances might lead to unexpected conclusions.
From that moment on, the relationship was beyond repair and indeed suffered further. That same season, Guardiola announced he would be leaving Barça. Even the announcement that he was leaving the club was complicated. Guardiola had asked that his successor not be named because he wanted to be able to explain his reasons for leaving witout having to compete with other news, but in the middle of the press conference, Rosell announced that Tito Vilanova would be the next coach.
Relationship with the ‘Boixos Nois’ [Crazy boys] and the youth section
There is a shadow that has doggedly followed Rosell all this time as president of Barça: He held a series of controversial meetings at his home before the elections with members of the ‘Boixos Nois’, ultra-right hooligans who had been kicked out of the stadium by Laporta. In an electoral debate, another candidate, Agustí Benedito said, ‘If the ‘Boixos’ come into your house, you can bet they’re going to come into the stadium’. And sure enough, after a short time, the board presented a project in which they planned to renovate the cheering area which included the hooligans and which allowed them access to the stadium. When the scandal erupted, Rosell admitted that he had come to an agreement with the Boixos Nois (There are some good ‘Boixos Nois’) but he was forced to correct the decision and cancel the project.
Qatar over Unicef
Another very controversial and shadowy decision was that of retiring the Unicef logo from the Barça jersey, which had originally come out of an agreement between Laporta’s board and the most famous humanitarian organization in the world. The Qatar sponsorship was hugely controversial, thanks to its lack of transparency, the conditions that it implied, and the image that it gave the club, which from that moment forward, was effectively collaborating with a dictatorship. The conditions under which the agreement was made—with Qatar Foundation’s logo and humanitarian programs for children—has changed gradually over time and now it is Qatar Airways whose name is printed on the front of the club jerseys and Unicef’s logo relegated to the lower back. Qatar is now omnipresent at the stadium and in all of the official team documentation.
Dangerous liaisons: Ricardo Teixeira
One of Sandro Rosell’s best friends in the world of football is the former president of the Brazilian Confederation of Football: Ricardo Teixeira. Their public friendship is recognized by the two, and in addition to the friendly game case in Brasilia, Teixeira was forced to resign from his responsibilities due to a multitude of corruption cases related with his management. The friendship between the two is so important that Rosell stepped in to get a temporary residency permit in Andorra for Teixeira which would help him avoid justice in his own country. The Diari d’Andorra published a report last August according to which Rosell is a member and cofounder of the accounting and financial consultancy firm, Comptages de Sant Julià, in charge of managing Teixeira’s residency paperwork.
Brazil and Andorra have no treaty of extradition and that made the Catalan state an ideal destination for Teixeira. In addition, at the time when he was petitioning for residency—which was ultimately denied—the Brazilian press had explained that the funds from the Brazilian side’s friendlies that had been diverted to Sandro Rosell’s copmanies had mostly ended up in the ANN Bank of Andorra.
