FC Barcelona’s new signings, including Robert Lewandowski, are reportedly not yet eligible to play in the league. This could be related to a balance sheet trick that the club is accused of.
Like many other football clubs, FC Barcelona needs money. However, he needs a lot more money because he has a debt of 1.35 billion euros. The club president gave this number in August 2021.
Barely a year later, FC Barcelona is collecting a lot of money. It would be naïve to believe that the club is about reducing liabilities. FC Barcelona is concerned with having the players that they bought for a lot of money equipped with a playing license.
Time is of the essence, as the Spanish La Liga begins for Barcelona on Saturday (13.08.2022) at 9 p.m. with a home game against Rayo Vallecanoand since they would the fans in the Camp Nou very happy to present Robert Lewandowski, who the club bought from FC Bayern for up to 50 million euros.
About 150 million euros transfer fee for three newcomers
In similar price categories were Raphinha, the von LeedsUnited came, and Jules Kounde from FC Seville. This is documented, because FC Barcelona dutifully named the sums in official communications.
Radio station “COPE” raises allegations
When it comes to registering the newcomers, verifiable facts and a media report mix, but the radio station “COPE” is considered extremely serious.
The broadcaster reported that all newcomers have not yet been registered and are therefore not eligible to play because FC Barcelona have not yet scraped together enough money. Comparatively strict financial requirements apply to clubs from La Liga, such as a budget cap for personnel costs.
In order to meet these requirements, FC Barcelona sold license rights in recent weeks. The case is now getting quite complicated, so it is presented in a simplified way, mind you in a mixture of verifiable facts and that Report by “COPE”.
Barcelona earned well over half a billion euros from the sale of license rights and reported this to La Liga. The radio station reports proceeds of 667 million euros, of which the league only recognized 517 million – too little to register the players.
“COPE” thus raises the accusation of a balance sheet trick, and it is said to have looked like this: FC Barcelona founded a company together with the investor from the USA, which was interposed to artificially drive up the proceeds. To explain the trick, you could use the following example:
A man’s credit card has insufficient funds. A bank asks the man to deposit 1,000 euros to cover them. The man sells his brother-in-law a watch, the brother-in-law pays him 800 euros, the man contributes the remaining 200 euros himself. The two set up a “Society of Watch Friends” and each pay their share there. The bank gets its 1000 euros from this company.
La Liga will only accept €517m?
The bank wouldn’t care, but La Liga doesn’t count the €150m as externally injected capital and therefore only includes €517m in the calculation.
It therefore looks as if FC Barcelona will have to sell further license rights or players, or force players to reduce their salaries. In addition, the club could be forced to divest further stakes in its content production company ‘Barca-Studios’.
Corporate income tax due now?
A request from the sports show to La Liga for a list of registered players and for the allegations made by “COPE” has so far remained unanswered.
So it remains in the room that FC Barcelona loses twice: he does not get the newcomers registered and also has to pay a capital gains tax of 25 percent on the booked 150 million euros – 37.5 million euros. Because the club lists the 150 million euros it has contributed as part of the 667 million euros collected, this tax is due from the point of view of the Spanish tax authorities.