Barcelona launch investigation into two suspicious payments made in Antoine Griezmann transfer | OneFootball

Joan Laporta’s administration has taken a keen interest in auditing Barcelona’s transactions under the previous board headed by Josep Maria Bartomeu.

Such an audit, when conducted, revealed around €30 million in suspicious financial activity, setting the alarm bells ringing and putting pressure on the previous board who had come out repeatedly to defend themselves.

After all, the said suspicious activity included inflated commissions in player transfers and has led to Bartomeu being investigated for misappropriation of funds and disloyal administration.

The Griezmann case

As relayed by SPORT in a recent report, Barcelona have now found evidence that directly links Bartomeu to a suspicious payment in the transfer saga of Antoine Griezmann.

The Catalans signed the player from Atletico Madrid by triggering his €120 million release clause, and while it was clean on paper, there is now a doubt that lawyer Gonzalez Franco was involved with a hidden commission in the deal.

Franco is said to have received €1.5 million as part of the transaction, which is suspicious because he is neither a sports agent nor was directly involved in the negotiations.

Griezmann was signed by Barcelona in 2019. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

In fact, Laporta and Co. have unearthed an email that threatens Griezmann’s entourage to ‘settle’ commission payments with the lawyer before they sent the final contract.

Moreover, the commission was structured to be 5% of the total salary and bonuses, which could go as high as €7 million, but the lawyer settled for a one-time payment of €1.5 million in July 2019.

The current board thus argue that the lawyer was not central to negotiations and that the payment was a farce.

They are now calling on the player and his sister, who served as his representative, to testify and confirm that the payments were not clean.

Further, there is an added claim that Barcelona paid Atletico Madrid €15 million to compensate them after their complaint to the RFEF that Barcelona negotiated with the player illegally before activating his clause. That, needless to say, is even more worrying if true.