The eighth section of the Court of Barcelona has confirmed the acquittal of Sandro Rosell for fiscal crime handed down a year ago by court number 3 of the Catalan capital. It is the fifth criminal acquittal of the former president of Barça. The rosary of cases opened against him and the closure without systematic conviction or directly with archive without even reaching a trial encourage the suspicion, denounced by the entrepreneur, that they were part of a civil liquidation plan in the framework of the operation Catalonia against independence, a kind of dirty war by the PP Government against the process.
In the latter case, the entrepreneur was accused by the Tax Agency and the State Attorney's Office of an alleged tax crime committed in 2012 for having declared income for professional services through a company for a fee of 200,000 euros. Those collections were always declared and the services actually performed, as recognized by the judgments, and it was a difference of interpretation, but a prison sentence was requested, although in the same inspection there was another company with partners that they acted in the same way and no accusation was made.
Another unusual fact of the case was that the inspection was communicated to Rosell when he was in the penitentiary center of Soto del Real - by order of the judge of the National Court, Carmen Lamela -, to which the officials of the ' Agency. It should be remembered that the businessman was imprisoned for almost two years for an alleged case of money laundering and criminal organization of which he was also acquitted in April 2019. According to the former president of Barça, in these years the Tax Agency has practiced 75 diligences.
In the hearing of the fiscal trial to which the Court's interlocutory now refers, Rosell's defense lawyer, Pau Molins, linked the two cases to the beginning of Operation Catalunya: "Until 2010 he acceded in the presidency of FC Barcelona, Rosell had never had any problems with justice or with the Treasury. From that moment, however, all his problems began, specifically following a conversation at that time between the president of the Catalan PP, Alicia Sánchez Camacho and commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, in which the former to order the second to investigate Sandro Rosell for his supposed connections with independence". The conversation mentioned by Molins between the politician and the police took place on November 6, 2012 and all the cases opened against the businessman are from after that date.
The first case against Rosell, which caused him to enter pre-trial detention for almost two years, began with the arrival of a rogatory commission from the New York Prosecutor's Office in June 2015, which requested information about his banking movements , although without requesting any non-specific action, nor account freezes, nor judicial actions. Yes, he did it, on the other hand, against other investigated persons who, despite this, were never bothered by the Spanish justice system. The Prosecutor's Office launched the operation that brought him to prison, with the always disturbing report of the famous UDEF 3rd group, and filed its complaint in March 2017, when it had already received a second rogatory in which the The New York Prosecutor's Office reported that Rosell did not appear on their list of defendants and the others did. Despite this, the case remained alive, certainly with no activity but with Rosell imprisoned, until the hearing and the court ruled on his acquittal in April 2019.
Three other acquittals are linked to the period in which Rosell was president of Barça, two of which stemmed from the hiring of Neymar, in June 2013. The last court case linked to the presidency of Barça in which he was acquitted was the complaint by Jaume Roures, president of the Mediapro production company, for alleged espionage, presented in 2016. The Barcelona Court decided to dismiss Rosell's accusation because it did not have "sufficient basis". Precisely this week, the oral hearing of the case against two ex-computer scientists, from Barça and Mediapro, begins.
Rosell still has two more open court cases. The first referred to the liver transplant that the then Barça player Eric Abidal underwent in 2012.
Finally, Rosell is being investigated for the payments of 7.3 million euros from FC Barcelona to José María Enríquez Negreira, vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees, between 1994 and 2018, therefore also during the businessman's mandate from Barcelona (2010-2014). An investigation opened much more recently, in May of last year, when the Tax Agency reported the facts to the Prosecutor's Office.
