Only at the beginning of the month did Barcelona present the serious findings of the investigation against the previous management headed by it Joseph Maria Bartomeu And even filed a complaint with the district attorney. “I have nothing to hide,” the former president claimed at the time, but it turns out the opposite is true and today (Wednesday) replica sums paid by Barça to the local media during the Bartomeu era were revealed.
According to a report by Sergei Escudero, the Catalans paid no less than 320,000 euros to journalist Marsal Lorente between 2015 and 2021. It’s more than € 50,000 a year in the years when Bartomeu was president of Barça to advance his affairs, but that’s not all. It turns out that the same contract between the parties was renewed until 2022 with an upgrade to 70,000 euros a year – a contract that Juan Laporta canceled when he was elected president.
It should be noted that Lorente writes columns for the Mundo Deportivo newspaper, which was known to be close to Barça’s management at a time when Bartomeu and his predecessor in office, Sandro Russell, were presidents. In fact, for a long time Lorente has garnered criticism for his sympathetic coverage of Bartomeu and Barça management during his last term as president. Two years ago, Gerard Pique even responded to Lorente’s tweet on Twitter, calling him “a doll.”
However, Lorente is not the only one who received high sums from Barça during the Bartomeu period. According to the report, newspapers such as Mundo Deportivo, Sport, La Vanguardia and El Priodico received between 50,000 and 175,000 euros a year from Barça. Other media outlets, including radio stations like Kedna Sir, promoted the affairs of Bartomeu and his men, but did so without money.