Barça stopped paying up to 20 irregular invoices linked to the signing of Malcom

BarcelonaThese are 20 invoices that Barça failed to pay because an alarm was raised. At the Camp Nou offices, it was noticed that they were all from the same company and had the same due date. In total, the club owed €699,380 to Business Futbol España, a company owned by football agent Junior Minguella, son of Josep Maria Minguella. Seven invoices totaling €217,800 had a due date of November 15, 2020. Twelve invoices worth €179,080 were dated October 15, 2020. And one invoice for €302,500 was dated February 15, 2011. These were invoices for intermediation services related to the loan or transfer of footballers who had been in the Barcelona youth academy, such as goalkeeper Adrià Ortolà, full-back Mateu Morey, midfielder Marcus McGuane, and forward Rafa Mujica. In reality, these were irregular invoices. At the time, The Newspaper It was reported that this invoicing concealed the payment of "10 million to the intermediaries" involved in the transfer of Malcom Silva de Oliveira to Barça, signed from Girondins de Bordeaux in the summer of 2018. In reality, however, all that money was never paid because, with Joan Laporta's arrival as president in March 2020, they were arrested. "Barça does not agree and rejects the correction of said invoices and states that it has not proceeded with their payment," the club explained in response to a court order.

ARA contacted the entourages of some of these reserve team players involved, and none were aware of any involvement by the company Business Futbol España. "No club pays you for advice on players you don't represent; they already have agents," explained one of the agents consulted. In fact, the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) themselves also confirmed this during their investigation: no player knew that Junior Minguella was involved in decisions about their future. The Catalan police investigated these invoices as a result of the forensic which was done by Laporta's incoming board regarding the presidency of Josep Maria Bartomeu, and which is being investigated by the Court of Instruction 16 of Barcelona.

Aside from these small invoices, there were two others that were paid to Business Fútbol España: one for €1.8 million and the other for €1.04 million. Payment was made through two promissory notes, issued on February 4, 2019 – Malcom had signed in the summer of 2018 – and with due dates in February 2022 and 2023. When Barça learned that the Spanish Tax Agency had issued a request to freeze Business Fútbol España's accounts, they made the payment. However, according to this newspaper, the company had already received the funds. This led Laporta's Barça to request in 2021 that the company "return" the promissory notes "as soon as possible." They received no response.

If you add up the three amounts, both paid and the 20 invoices that were stopped, it coincides with the 3.5 million commission for Malcom that the club claims the previous board had agreed upon with the Catalan company—and which could later end up in the hands of third parties. This is in addition to the five million that were supposed to go to the player's Brazilian agents. Bartomeu's board had always maintained that the final commission amount was 8.5 million, not 10 million.

The directors and executives of that time are passing the buck on this matter, pointing in the opposite direction. Was the operation orchestrated by the top management? Or was it the sporting director? In any case, invoices exceeding 200,000 euros had to be approved by the board, while smaller amounts could bypass board review. In this regard, the sporting vice-president at the time, Jordi Mestre, testified before the judge presiding over the case that he did not authorize the commissions. What did happen, according to the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) who investigated the case, was a modification of Malcom's employment contract once his signing was finalized: the terms of the intermediary payments were changed, which meant that the incoming board had to carry out a tax regularization to avoid a fine from the Tax Office. The origin of all this

The Malcom deal has a precedent: Samuel Umtiti. A year before Barça signed him, Minguella informed the club about the player. And when the French center-back's transfer was completed, he requested a fee, which was denied. The club already had the player under surveillance, and Bartomeu handled the negotiations directly with the president of Olympique Lyonnais, without any intermediaries. The French defender ultimately cost €25 million. Two years later, Malcom entered the scene. The player was being courted by Monchi's Roma, who were close to signing him, and that's where sporting directors Ramon Planes and Éric Abidal came in. They negotiated the deal for Barça, and Junior Minguella was the key figure in changing the player's destination from Roma to Barcelona. However, this came at a cost, with several commissions being shared among all the parties involved. Monchi's Roma, who threatened to take legal action over the transfer, ultimately backed down.