"I'll tell Barça to sign him; he doesn't have to work, they'll pay him."

Barcelona"We were offered something that even telling it makes me ashamed of how absurd it was," explains one of the Tartas sisters, who put Two complaints for aggravated fraud against Joan Laporta, Core Store and CSSB Limited After the 2016 investment transactions they carried out in these companies worth €400,000, they were not paid the agreed-upon 6% interest nor were they reimbursed for their invested capital. "She [Sandra Solé, one of the intermediaries in these transactions] told us: 'You'll get paid somehow. I thought I'd tell Barça to hire you,'" she adds. "She told us: 'No, you're not going to work. It's simply a contract, and they'll keep paying you,'" adds the other sister.

This is one of the new developments. Regarding the five complaints of aggravated fraud related to Core Store, CSSB Limited and Laporta that the documentary contributes Laportagate, directed by journalist Andreu Rauet, which premieres this Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Texas Cinemas in Barcelona and will be published on YouTube on the @Laportagate channel starting at 10 p.m. All the complainants agree that before making these investments, the intermediaries sold their solvency with arguments such as that Laporta was behind them. One of the intermediaries, Fernando Oliveira, admitted in court that the current president of Barça brought confidence to the investments.

The Tartas sisters also explain that Solé offered to sell some of his paintings to Barça (he is a painter by profession) to recover them. But he refused. Solé herself, in an audio recording featured in the documentary, tells one of the investors who will be asking to join the club: "From now on, I'll try to get paid by Barça for three or four months."

Thus, the documentary presents new evidence about the story that the Tartas sisters had already told to the plaintiffs, the one that the ARA advanced this Tuesday. One of them states that, in order to recover the investments, there was the possibility of joining Barça: "Ms. [Sandra] Solé proposed to the plaintiffs that they apply for a job at FC Barcelona as a way of recovering the money invested because it was the bargaining chip they were using with other investors."

Toni Cruz and his signing for Barça

Another of the arguments in the Tartas sisters' complaints, as explained by this newspaper, was that Toni Cruz, former member of La Trinca and creator of programs such asOperation TriumphandMartian Chronicles, was part of these investments in CSSB Limited and Core Store. There is even talk of a Chinese television program project similar to Big Brother with footballers. Later, in the summer of 2022, Cruz joined Barça as an external advisor to the now-defunct Barça TV company, the same position he holds today at Barça Studios. "Toni Cruz [works at Barça] in compensation for what they owed him from the investment," says one of the Tartas sisters in the documentary. Laportagate.

In addition, the investigation reveals an email sent by Oliveira to Manana Giorgadze, then Laporta's secretary and now head of the Barça presidential office, in which the former provides the bank accounts of investors so they can receive interest from transactions with CSSB Limited and Core Store. One of the bank accounts that appears is that of Toni Cruz.

The documentary also focuses on Bryan Bachner, director of CSSB Limited between 2016 and 2021 and currently director of Barça Vision and the club's offices in Hong Kong and New York. "This Bryan, who is being deceived, has been paid because now he's the director of Barça throughout Asia. They bought him, they made him director of Barça throughout Asia. They must have given him €200,000 a year... and he's been keeping quiet. [...] Bryan is covered," Solé tells one of the investors. "Bryan used to call me every week, [now] he never calls me. I called him yesterday. 'I'm coming to Barcelona,' he told me. A guy who used to talk to me every week suddenly talks to me once every month and a half. I trusted him until I saw they made him director of Barça. Now he's gone," he adds.

Laporta speaks about Reus in the first person

Core Store was founded in 2011 by Laporta and Joan Oliver—Barça's general manager during the lawyer's first term—to provide consulting services. Laporta served as a joint administrator and shareholder between 2011 and 2019. Oliver remains a shareholder today. Until 2019, the company's headquarters were at 469 Avinguda Diagonal in Barcelona, ​​where the Laporta & Arbós law firm is located.Shortly after Core Store, CSSB Limited was born., a Hong Kong-based company linked to the former that has managed sports entities such as BIT FC (Beijing Institute of Technology Football Club), a modest Chinese football club. In 2014, it landed at CF Reus Deportiu, controlled by Oliver, and eventually held 57% of the entity's shares before Reus disappeared in 2020 due to financial difficulties.

But Laporta has always distanced himself from Reus and its disappearance. Therefore, it is significant that, in his statement as a suspect in another complaint for aggravated fraud related to CSSB Limited and Core Store, In this case, placed by a Primitiva winner who invested 4.7 million euros, speak in the first person when referring to the Baix Camp club. "When Reus was promoted to the Second Division for the first time in 100 years, we had an offer to buy. Some of us said to Joan [Oliver]: 'Maybe it's time to sell.' And Joan, who is a man of his personality, said: 'Now we can make the effort to get us promoted to the First Division.' I think we would have.