Corruption within FC Barcelona

Hi,

my name is Wilbur to and this is my

report of corruption or potential corruption of Fc Barcelona,

the football club,

Fc Barcelona Football Club. Barcelona is one of the premier clubs in spain.

They have countless accolades and tournament wins

with teams comprised of players with their

own accolades and legendary managers um that

are consistently famous throughout the football world.

In addition, Barcelona is consistently one of the wealthiest clubs in the world.

As you can see in this Deloitte Money League.

Fourth is Fc Barcelona, despite having not even a great year,

they're still in the top five almost every single year in the Deloitte Money League.

Um Looking at the team organization,

this football club is owned by the members rather than one or a few people,

one of the few clubs left at least in the

upper echelon of leads still have this democratic structure,

however,

it is still run by a board of directors and the

president who is elected every six years by the members,

currently john Laporta as president for the second time.

Um looking at the structure of the company, it's very businesslike now,

due to the efforts made by Johann Laporta.

When he entered the club in 2003,

he modernized the club to have an organizational

structure similar to that of a company,

as you can see, it's a very typical format for a company of today.

Um Looking at some of the players,

this report is not particularly about the players of the sport.

Um It does relate to them in some ways because

they're involved in the transactions that lead to corruption allegations.

Um But this report is not really about

the players of Barcelona despite their contributions.

Quick look at the presidents of recent years, joan Laporta. In

3 2002, Sandra Russell to Jose Maria, Bartolomeo back to La Porta,

looking at the rise of joan Laporta.

Um He was elected into a sticky situation with Barsa. They were €186 million in debt

and they were also playing relatively poorly

for Barsa standards in the years prior,

under the prior president,

um he had to radically change the club by signing star players,

choosing unconventional managers,

um trying to digitize and revitalize the marketing

of the company by getting revenue from sponsors.

In addition, he had an effort to get to a million people

in the club, the socios, the members of the club which didn't get to a million,

but he was able to raise the club participation by a significant margin.

His downfall is in Sandra Marcel's claims about his potential corruption.

Um Once Russell took presidency

years later,

he reviewed the financial statements and the books with

his accounts and supposedly found altered financial reports,

saying that the president hit an €80 million loss with a

profit of €11 million in his final year as president,

um Laporta among other peoples of the board were tried for these charges.

They were later absolved for about €3 million. They were supposed to pay.

Um seeing no time or anything like that for their potential actions,

Looking at Sandra Russell's presidency,

the club did extremely well under him with some great players.

In addition to the signing of Neymar,

he was actually accused of falsifying the real amount paid for Neymar.

They claimed that he listed a very low price for sign for signing such a star player,

which is very possible considering um, he was

a very valuable player who was not paid for that much money relatively.

In addition,

he was later accused of money laundering

and coordination with the Brazilian football confederation

Getting commissioned from about 20 Brazilian games.

He was held in pre trial prison for nearly two years,

about 21 months before being released

And he would have been facing 11 years and about €60 million in fines.

The last president before we go back to Japan Laporta's Jose Maria Bartolomeo

who

did extremely well on the football side,

Barcelona continued to arrive with the great team and managers that they had,

but he was also involved in the name are signing.

He was released much earlier than Russell but um,

definitely related in on the team that was involved in that and

later towards the end of his run as president for Fc Barcelona.

He was erected for arrested for not complying with the Bar Seagate

requirements.

He was not supplying documents that would prove he wasn't part of it or was part of it.

This scandal was around suppressing negative media of the club.

So whether people were putting negative things out

about the players or about the organization,

supposedly him and his team were trying to suppress this media,

moving on to what corruption really is.

Um,

this conjure definition from a variety of sources

as well as what I've gathered from,

from the research is that corruption is a form of an immoral or dishonest

action carried out by an individual or group in order to incur personal gain.

Essentially this means, um,

someone does something unjust in order to better their own personal situation,

which usually leads to defamation of the

institution or organization that they're heading.

It really

hurts the trust levels of people within the organization

and of the external factors related to the organization.

Um, and usually current eruption since it's for the personal gain,

the people doing it,

Are they doing it for themselves or for the people that

are also well off in order to further propel their success.

Ways to counter corruption.

VC transparency is the most obvious way to prevent being corrupt.

If you were to be supervised by yourself and the third party organization.

Um, it's very difficult to be corrupt when you are constantly monitored

and

red flag about Barcelona and their potential for corruption is that

the board is at the top of the chain of command

and they can make large decisions using

other people's money,

seemingly without ever consulting them nor do they need to, despite claiming to be

Moscow, um, Club and Democratic

Club for 144,000,

then a quick way to compare Barcelona to a notably sustainable

and ethical company with a lot of transparency would be Patagonia.

Patagonia

is considered an ideal way to run a company.

Their supply chain is open to the public eye

and they're just very honest about how they pay

their employees and how they get their materials and not

that this is completely feasible for Barcelona to achieve

because they have competition and they can't reveal everything.

Um, if there was a third party institution that could regulate their actions, um,

there's a better chance we would see less and less of

these allegations because they would be stopped before they could occur.

Um,

moving forward to some primary research

for this report. I performed um, polls that were sent out to people.

One was a generic poll about corruption and

the other was just about people's opinions in Barcelona

to see how these answers correlate and if

they change based on sport versus generic institutions.

Um, the goal was just to see,

um,

whether or not people actually care about

corruption in sport versus corruption in general.

Um, looking at the poll, people were given two options.

How do you feel about corruption?

Everybody said it's unethical to exploit others obviously,

but about two thirds people said they would

never contribute to a corrupt institution intentionally.

While the other third roughly said most institutions are corrupt and

there's really no way to get out of dealing with them.

Um If you were to discover you were contributing,

we're supporting a corrupt institution, what would you do?

About 86% of people said they would stop using the product completely if possible,

or just use it a lot less.

Um we'll compare these numbers to have people react about Barcelona in a second.

Um when asked a hypothetical question about using

stakeholders money to dramatically overspend for assets,

which is my replacement for players, um

would that be considered corrupt if it was

for the betterment of the company's success?

Um Most people said yes,

a lot of people said somewhat because it's it's for the betterment of the company.

It's not that unethical.

Um as long as it's not hurting too many people.

Um But I think the more drastic question is if

they overpaid um to acquire these assets which are players,

um and then lied about the actual amount.

Is that corruption and overwhelming majority said yes. Um

So we're just going to compare that to the answers that we see in the bar Sippel.

So first, just to gauge the audience of these I. S. Students. The other

um paul was sent out to my friends back at penn State

to try to just get a generic view on that and then

Compare it to Barcelona from I. S. students,

are fans, while they're here,

15% are fans in general and about a third or fans of other teams are just not fans.

Um

About 50% of people have attended a game and about 30% of

people would want to or planning on going to the game.

Um, And so

When asked about whether or not they're ethical, we've got very split answers.

But the big question here is would you still go to a game

knowing that this company or club has a history of corrupt leadership?

And 60% of people said Yes

60% of people said they would still go to a game even though it was corrupt

While and the other pole for corruption.

About 86% of people said they completely stopped or really try to limit

their

consumption of this product. So it's just interesting to see how the answers change

as we

skew the

institution as a generic one or as a specific club.

In addition, I've attended a few games,

I've tried to ask a bunch of Barcelona fans about it.

They weren't too adamant about answering questions about

corruption or about answering questions from an american.

I do have a little bit of spanish and I try to interact with a few of them,

Most of the answers I got were simply just no, I really don't think. I think it's just

um a ploy or some sort of political device, but that was only from about two people.

Um in addition at the game, you can see about 100,000 people there.

And it's very clear that corruption, whether or not it's real,

whether or not they believe it,

they clearly do not care and would like to

enjoy the football game and really aren't worried about,

um, the organizational structure as you're at the game,

understandably. So,

moving forward to some analysis of this primary research, um,

students were unknowingly addressing some of the issues around Barcelona's

corruption as they were answering the generic corruption questions.

Um,

they

can be compared then to the second poll, which shows that the interaction about,

or the opinion on corruption definitely changes when it comes to sports,

specifically football.

For Fc.

Barcelona,

people seem to care less about corruption when

the institution is very separate from the product,

the president of the organization of Fc.

Barcelona appears to be very different than

the actual players in the club itself. So when these items are separated,

it's very difficult to see the corruption or even care about it.

And this led me to the question is,

could

this not caring relate to the legal allegations being dropped

and we'll look into that further in a moment.

Some other approaches between the lines of the two poles.

Um,

is it just that the structure of these membership football clubs

with the transactional environment of football

could automatically result in corruption occurring.

And is it really fair to claim that these people are corrupt,

or is there something about the system that needs to be changed

and we'll discuss that in a moment in the conclusion section.

Final conclusions.

Regardless of the absolved allegations and claims over the last few presidencies,

the large amount of claims from internal and external sources indicates

almost certain corrupt corruption or unethical acts by these presidents.

It's difficult to target which one is true or which one is false,

or if we're even discussing any allegations that are true.

But with the amount of internal claims, it's just very likely that there's

definitely been a moderate amount of corruption throughout the past 20 years.

Um The primary research also shows

how people's opinions are drastically different

when you compare generic corrupt institution to a football team that,

you know, and love, or at least no.

Um to there

corruption.

Just looking at the structure, once again, I believe that due to the structure,

they'll always have succeeding presidents claiming

that the prior president was corrupt.

Um

I think just the idea of spending other people's money,

Um, as a group of 10 people with no regulated market

Teams have complete control over how much they're spending and

can definitely overspend to try to pull in these assets,

pulling these players

and they don't really consult the other 99% of

the owners of the club when they do this.

And and if that's skewed in any single way or shined

in a specific direction, it can be perceived as corruption.

Um,

quick look at the individual presidents and what they have done

and whether or not it's likely that they actually were corrupt.

Like I said before, when a board has complete control over financial decisions

while they're not full owners,

the board is likely aware of the true spending that's going on and then most of the

transactions that are going on there as close

as you can possibly be to the transactions.

Um, so the fact that the second in command, his right hand man,

Sandra Russell reported him is very compelling that he was probably corrupt.

Looking at Sandra Russell, he had a very close connection with brazil,

which could explain his ability to interact with the

National Federation of brazil for Football.

And he supposedly

Game commissions from about 20 games, which seems

possible

due to some other allegations about sneaky deals that he may have wanted to cover up

the overspending on players with, um,

some illicit actions in order to increase revenue discreetly.

Lastly, looking at joseph Artemio.

Um,

the club in Catalonia is extremely popular and has nearly universal

support espanol and other clubs around are not as popular.

So it's very weird that he would need

to suppress negative press that aggressively for players

or for the organization unless there was something

he was generally genuinely trying to hide.

Um, I just think that action alone is very telling,

quick look at the sources just for the photos and

um, for the research.

I just think it's important to note how opinions change when it comes

to sport and how legally this could definitely help when the media skews sport

and a very

positive light and doesn't like to get into conflict theory.

They're very functional and I think that this will continue

to happen until the structure of the sport changes completely

and Barcelona is corrupt.

But I think it's more to do with their structure rather than the actual leaders.

Corruption within FC Barcelona

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