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Neymar will go on trial for corruption in his contract with Barcelona one month before the World Cup in Qatar

2022-07-26T17:31:19.822Z


Former president Sandro Rosell sits back on the bench after his acquittal by the commissions in Brazil


Neymar, in a match against Peru during the last Copa América. Andre Coelho (EFE)

The relationship between Neymar and Barça has led to one of the biggest legal sagas in the world of football.

The last episode premieres on October 17 at the Barcelona Court, the day on which the trial against the Brazilian striker and five other people for alleged corruption in his contract with the Barça club is scheduled to begin.

The prosecution is asking for two years in prison for Neymar, who is facing an oral hearing barely a month before the start of the World Cup in Qatar.

On the defendants' bench, they will accompany him, for crimes of corruption between individuals and fraud, his parents, two former presidents of Barça (Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu) and a former director of Santos, his former club.

FC Barcelona is listed as a legal entity and the Prosecutor's Office demands the payment of 8.4 million euros.

The trial is the (late) consequence of a complaint filed seven years ago by DIS, a Brazilian company specializing in the football market that feels harmed and cheated by the signing of Neymar by Barça.

The firm owned 40% of the player's federal rights when he was a member of Santos de Sao Paulo, from where he came to Barcelona.

He had acquired them in 2009, when the striker was barely 17 years old, for a price equivalent to around two million euros.

DIA, which belongs to the Sonda Group - a conglomerate with supermarkets, gas stations and real estate agencies that employs more than 10,000 people in Brazil - considers that it was the victim of a deception concocted by the player, his relatives and Barça and claims compensation of more than €150 million.

The company and the Prosecutor's Office - which maintains a very similar story about what happened - consider that in 2011 the player and his father, Neymar da Silva Santos, signed two simulated contracts with Barça while ignoring that the footballer's rights belonged to Santos already DIS.

One of those contracts, for 40 million, allegedly served to tie the signing before he was released on the market and was supposedly done behind the backs of those affected.

"Barcelona and the player broke the FIFA rules and altered free competition in the transfer market," the company said in 2016, when, once the judicial investigation was completed, the indictments were presented.

Although the Prosecutor's Office asks for two years in prison for Neymar and the payment of a fine of ten million, the company raises the request to five years and requests that he be disqualified, for the same period of time, from playing football.

He also asks for five years for his parents.

The prosecution is much more reserved on this point: it asks for two years in prison for the father and one for the mother.

New blow for the Barça

The investigation began in the National High Court, but has ended up falling to the Barcelona High Court after a tortuous judicial journey that has lengthened the resolution of the conflict.

The trial for the crimes of corruption between individuals and fraud is held in seven sessions until October 31 and represents a new blow for Barça regarding the

Neymar case

.

In 2016, the club agreed to pay 5.5 million euros for two tax crimes in the operation that culminated in the signing of Neymar, now in the ranks of Paris Saint-Germain.

It was a consent sentence that made Barça the first football team condemned as a legal person.

That pact with the Prosecutor's Office allowed the then president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, and his predecessor, Sandro Rosell, who were facing prison sentences, to be exonerated from responsibility.

The October trial puts the two former presidents of Barça on the pillory again.

After spending 21 months in provisional prison for the alleged laundering of commissions with friendly matches of the Brazilian team, Rosell was acquitted in 2019. It was not, however, the end of his legal problems.

The former president faces a request for two years and nine months in prison for defrauding the Treasury of more than 230,000 euros in 2012 through a company owned by him.

And the Neymar affair is closing in on him now: the Prosecutor's Office asks for five years in prison for him, although DIA raises the request to eight years.

In the October trial, only DIA requests prison for Bartomeu (also eight years) because the Prosecutor's Office considers that there is no evidence that, as vice president in 2011, he knew that a negotiation was being carried out for the signing behind the back of Santos.

But, for other reasons, Bartomeu does not have a placid judicial horizon before him either.

He was arrested -and remains under investigation- for having used money from the club to commission works that involved defamation, on social networks, of players and opponents of the former president.

Until 2020, Barça paid 2.3 million for these jobs, a good part of them destined to improve Bartomeu's personal reputation.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2022-07-26

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