Bartomeu denies Barça 'has contracted any kind of service to disparage anyone'

The president of FC Barcelona, Josep Maria Bartomeu, made reference today to the accusations aimed at the Club over unethical practices on social media via a monitoring service company contracted by the organisation. During his speech at the awards ceremony for the International Sporting Journalism Award given to Jorge Valdano, Bartomeu was firm in his reply: “In the first place, and so that no-one is left in any doubt, Barça has not contracted any services to disparage neither players, nor politicians nor former presidents. It is completely false. We will defend ourselves wherever necessary via all means at our disposal against anyone who accuses us of such practices.”

Bartomeu recognised that the monitoring service has been under contract to the Club since 2017 “as the immense majority of large corporations in the 21^st century” and he confirmed that ‘one of the accounts linked to the company providing the service has made an inappropriate comment relating to persons within our organisation and this morning we have given instructions to end that contract.”

The president continued with his explanation and attempted to make it clear that “to the question of whether we have requested monitoring services of social media, the reply is YES, and we will continue to do so. To the question of whether we have requested the disparagement of persons or organisations via social media, the answer is NO, and we will pursue that who accuse us of such.” To end, Bartomeu reiterated that “we will defend ourselves where necessary as we have done recently and successfully against accusations of corruption and spying. In the corruption claim involving Paulinho that we were accused of, it was rectified in court and in the spying case, justice proved us right, with the case closed in relation to the Club.”