Former Barcelona president acquitted of tax evasion charges

Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu will go down as the leading men responsible for Barcelona’s exponential fall after their golden generation. The two businessmen sent the club’s finances into ruins and almost took it to a stage of no return.

Both Rosell and Bartomeu have spent the last few years running from court to court as their long list of money laundering and financial mismanagement continue to come to light. However, there is a feeling that their penalties do not do justice to the atrocities they committed during their tenure.

According to reports from SPORT, the Court acquitted Rosell of tax evasion charges earlier today.

The former president was said to have used a company owned by himself to evade paying €230,591 to the public treasury in 2012 and the prosecutor asked for a sentence of two years and nine months. However, the Justice ruled in favour of Rosell.

The Spanish businessman was the club president from July 2010 to January 2014. While the period saw the team play some of it best football, the repercussions of Rosell’s actions were only seen in years to come.

He spent two years in prison for fraud and money laundering between 2017 and 2019 and went as far as blaming the club for his imprisonment.

“If I had not been Barcelona president, I would not have gone to prison, of that I do not doubt at all. I don’t think that anybody would have investigated me as a business, nobody would have spied on me, nor would there have been such aggressive fiscal persecution that I still face,” he said.

This acquittal would bring an overly long-drawn saga to an end, probably not in the way most fans would have wanted to, though.