It's not Barça who should pay for it.

BarcelonaAndreu Rauet, a journalist from Reus with a thirst for truth, time to dig and good sources (which unfortunately are not in abundance in the country's newsrooms), He wanted to put order in the mess of companies with strange names, repeated non-payments, and complicit silence associated with the demise of their hometown's football club. While the first documentary, born from a university assignment, attempted to chronicle the perfect storm that sank Reus Deportiu, now, in a second installment, it focuses on the practices its owners developed to capitalize the project with money from private investors, which they raised through two intermediaries.

The promised lucrative returns turned into a poisoned candy. The money, estimated at around 7 million euros, vanished. Only a small portion of the agreed-upon interest was paid, and as recorded in the documentary LaportagateAt least one of these small payments was ordered through the professional office of Joan Laporta, who is one of the defendants in the five aggravated fraud lawsuits filed so far in this scheme. Who knows if evidence like this prompted the Barça president to speak personally about Reus's demise when he testified at the end of January about an alleged €4.7 million fraud involved in this scheme. Until now, Laporta had distanced himself from the issue.

Another family that has filed a complaint for the same reason is featured in Rauet's documentary and goes even further. They accuse the Barça president of having offered to recoup the money with fictitious jobs for Barça, something that, they suggest, had already been consummated with the signings of Toni Cruz and Bryan Bachner by the club after Laporta won the 2021 elections. "Bryan has been smuggled," it reads. appears in the emails about the failed investments in Reus that have now been brought to court. Both the former La Trinca player and Bachner remain silent when asked about it. A bad piece of work.

We already know that Laporta manages Barça like a "family business," and, in fact, a good handful of Barça fans accept that his administration has authoritarian tendencies sprinkled with generous doses of populism. We're also aware that personal business deals like those with Reus didn't go well for him, and that, partly for this reason, he made such a titanic effort to regain the notoriety afforded him by the Barça presidency. All of this is palatable, especially for his fans, when it comes to Laporta. What's less so is that the club he presides over has to endure having a leader indicted for an alleged fraud that, according to the plaintiffs, he has tried to compensate with money that isn't his own, but rather belongs to the members who voted for him.

Beyond the possible fraud, which justice will decide whether it existed or not, what matters here is whether Laporta has really used Barça to cover up past holes. If it's all a lie, it's about time he and the club (poor club) filed lawsuits left and right. Every day that goes by without decisive action in this regard will fuel the feeling that there's not a shred of fairness in all of this. No matter how much Hansi Flick and his players try to get the ball rolling.