The two most expensive transfers of Atlético de Madrid (and in the ‘top ten’ of the highest in history) are under suspicion. The league champion has seen how in the last hours the transfers of joao felix to Wanda and from Antoine Griezmann to Camp Nou were seen wrapped in a shadow of suspicion. In the summer of 2019, both cost 120 million, but the extras of both are under suspicion. While Barça have asked the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office to investigate whether there was a crime in the payment in 2019 of 15 million added to the Frenchman’s clause, the Portuguese Public Ministry is analyzing the 6 millions of more that the mattress club disbursed that same year to take over the services of the Portuguese striker.
According to the ‘Correio da Manhã’, the Portuguese Prosecutor’s Office is analyzing the transfer of Joao Félix in the ‘Red Card’ case, for which Louis Filipe Vieira, president of Benfica from 2003 until last summer, was arrested on suspicion of tax crimes and money laundering, some of them directly related to the club. The suspicions focus on three fronts: the six million euros more that the Spanish club paid Benfica, related to alleged financing costs of the operation; the commission of 12 million paid by Benfica to Jorge Mendes and Manuel Moreira de Sa for brokerage services; and possible tax fraud by Felix himself. The Portuguese newspaper provides excerpts from the listening of the conversations that the former financial director of Benfica, Miguel Moreira, had with Vieira and Mendes, among others.
The ’emails’ of discord
Joao Félix arrived at Atlético as Griezmann’s replacement, whose transfer is also being questioned. A group of partners came to request through a letter that the former president Bartomeu investigate whether the payment of certain commissions for the transfer of the footballer was true. The letter was presided over by information published by the newspaper El Mundo in which it was noted that the player had negotiated in writing and secretly in March 2019, while playing for the mattress club, the payment of 14 million euros in commissions for his signing for Barcelona. The beneficiaries were his sister and agent, his father and a mediator who was key for the Frenchman to wear the Barça shirt.
The information was based on a series of emails reflecting conversations between the parties in which the disbursement of four large commission batches was discussed. In one of them, a game was assigned to Griezmann’s sister and agent, and to his father. The second was reserved for the family’s own French lawyer. The third, to a French commission agent who had already participated in the negotiations that took place the previous year; and the fourth, the most important regarding the amount for a lawyer who was key in his approach to Bartomeu’s Barcelona. Now it remains to verify if all these disbursements were made and if they constitute a crime.