Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, presidents of FC Barcelona in two different stages (2010-2014, the first; 2014-2020, the second) studied yesterday with their respective lawyers the possibility of suing Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga. Both understand that Tebas tried to incriminate them through misinterpreted documentation and handed over to the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office, in order to suggest their involvement in real estate operations and movements in “financial institutions and investment banks”. All this included in the so-called Negreira case.
Therefore, the reactions to the information from La Vanguardia and Cronicalibe.com, which revealed last Monday that this document had been sent by Tebas, follow one another. If on Monday FC Barcelona asked for the resignation of the president of LaLiga through a statement, now it is Rosell and Bartomeu who understand that Tebas’ action directly accuses them in the wrong way. It remains to be seen whether the strategy of the two former presidents when it comes to taking legal action converges or is faced differently. Pau Molins is Sandro Rosell’s lawyer and José MarÃa Fuster-Fabra is Bartomeu’s lawyer. Both the aforementioned lawyers and those representing Ã’scar Grau, Albert Soler and FC Barcelona, ​​all of whom are being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office in the Negreira case, have already met on two occasions (the last, last week) to unify criteria towards the judicial procedure that has already begun.
According to this newspaper, it is Josep Maria Bartomeu who has decided that he will take legal action against Javier Tebas in the event that the investigating judge or the Prosecutor’s Office rejects the document he provided, considering it invalid as evidence. Rosell, for his part, is waiting for the evolution of the case. A possibility that should not be ruled out is that it is Barça as an entity that takes the first step against Tebas, and Rosell and Bartomeu join them later.
In order for the writing provided by Tebas to be rejected, the version of the family of Josep Contreras, the (now dead) author of the manuscript that the president of LaLiga sent to the Prosecutor’s Office on February 22, will have to be corroborated as a witness . The manuscript included a series of names that Tebas assured that “may coincide with the names and surnames of certain former managers of the FCB”. He suggested, for example, that the name “Román” accompanied by the word “lawyer” could refer to Román Gómez Ponti, former head of legal services at the Barcelona club; that the last name “Rosell” coincided with that of the ex-president of Barça and that the name “Josep Maria” could correspond to the also ex-president of Barcelona Bartomeu.
In reality, the document in question was written decades ago and the names pointed out by Tebas referred to Emilio Román, lawyer for Contreras, to Ramon Rosell, accountant of his companies, and to Josep Maria, actually an employee of Banca Catalana responsible of Contreras’ accounts in the entity.
Josep Contreras, who in his day was manager of Barça B, was among those investigated in the Soule case, in which LaLiga is also named as a private prosecution. In this case, a possible diversion of funds from the Spanish Football Federation during the period in which Villar was president is being investigated.
