Denounce the millionaire agreement of Barça with the Congo to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office

BarcelonaBarça has been reported to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office due to the "sponsorship signed in mid-2025 with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the document registered on May 5, which ARA has accessed, it is specified that the complaint is directed against the club, against "the [Barça] directors responsible for the litigious contract" and against the Central African country's Minister of Sports, Didier Budimbu Ntubuanga. It is requested that they be investigated for alleged crimes of money laundering, prevarication, and embezzlement of public funds. The procedure arises from an initiative by Congolese citizens residing in Spain and is coordinated with another action that was launched regarding the sponsorship that the Congo itself signed with Monaco. This complaint has been investigated by the Principality's justice system since March 6, after the French system declared itself incompetent in the first instance.

The main object of the complaint against Barça is the agreement signed in the summer of 2025 between the Congolese government and the Catalan club for a total value of between 40 and 44 million euros to be distributed over four seasons, until June 30, 2029. The sponsorship foresees that the first team football players will wear "R.D. Congo - Cœur d'Afrique [heart of Africa]" on their training jerseys. The entity marketed the agreement as a "commitment to foster sports development" and "enrich the training of young athletes in the country by transmitting its ecosystem of values". Likewise, it announced the creation of the Casa de la RDC, an "immersive exhibition" at Camp Nou to "showcase the cultural diversity and sporting tradition" and "captivate millions of visitors and Barça fans worldwide".

In the complaint filed, the prosecution maintains that the agreement, "financed exclusively with Congolese public funds," was agreed upon "without prior public tender, without being included in any budget law and without the approval of the country's Parliament." Furthermore, the complainants emphasize that "the commitment of millions of public euros" (more than 40 million euros) represents a "manifest disproportion between the declared object of the contract and its real public utility." In this regard, they denounce that the "absence of a concrete and proportionate counterparty from Barça – limited to the use of a slogan on training shirts – allows us to presume a mechanism for transferring Congolese public funds to Spanish financial circuits," which could incur a presumed offense of money laundering and a violation of the duty to avoid it. Likewise, they accuse the Barcelona club of not complying with "due diligence obligations" by receiving very significant amounts from a foreign country and not taking into account that Budimbu was convicted three times by the Belgian justice system between 2014 and 2016 for fraud, receiving stolen goods, and money laundering.

A suspicious intermediary and 'modus operandi'

The complainants also highlight the lack of control mechanisms by Barça when analyzing the alleged role of an intermediary in the operation, Aurélien Logeais, who would also have participated, as agent for minister Budimbu, in the operation with Monaco that is being investigated by the Monegasque justice. Logeais operated through the company Pamars, whose corporate purpose was modified 15 days before signing the agreement with the club from the Principality. "Barça could not reasonably ignore that its contractor was represented by an agent with a suspicious modus operandi", the complaint states, which observes a coherence between the two millionaire sponsorship agreements: "The same intermediary, the same method, and the same political beneficiary are at the center of two contracts signed outside of any legal budgetary framework with top-level European sports institutions". The procedure, of which there is still no official news at the Barça offices, is pending admission for processing.

There is a third club sponsored by Congo, Milan, but there is no case open in the Italian justice.