La Liga giants Barcelona have informed that they are likely to initiate a legal investigation against the former club vice-president Emili Rousaud who had submitted his resignation last week with five other board members in a dramatic turn of events.
Rousaud and another vice-president Enrique Tombas, alongside directors Silvio Elias, Maria Teixidor, Josep Pont and Jordi Clasamiglia informed club president Josep Maria Bartomeu about their decision to quit via a joint letter.
The letter, which used some strong words to describe the club’s current condition, urged the president to review the club leadership as soon as possible in order to overcome the challenges presented by the ongoing global crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In the face of grave and unfounded allegations made by Emili Rousaud, the club’s former vice-president, in a number of media interviews, the board of directors categorically denies any action that could be described as corruption and have agreed to bring the corresponding criminal action accordingly,” Barcelona said in an official statement.
“The Board of Directors have agreed that, once the audit is completed, it will analyse the content and conclusions derived from it, publish them, and will make their decisions and take appropriate measures based on their final result,” the Spanish club added.
The resignations of the officials had come after a months-long tussle between Bartomeu and his opposite lobby has already put the club in an internal turmoil ahead of the next summer’s board elections.
That everything was not right in Barcelona was evident by the number of occasions the club president’s role was put under the scanner this season. Men’s football team skipper Lionel Messi has also expressed his grief over the team run by Bartomeu.
According to an ESPN report, the president only wanted “people he can trust” in the board in his final year and had personally called four of the six members who resigned – Rousaud, Tombas, Elias and Pont – to step down.