Former Barca boss vows legal counter-attack

Barcelona’s former chairman Joan Laporta said on Monday he would file suit against the club’s members who voted to take legal action against him over alleged financial mis-management.

On Saturday, the club’s members decided at a meeting to take Laporta to court to force him to explain a financial loss of almost 80 million euros for last season.

They want him in particular to explain some payments, notably 8million euros paid to an agent of former player Zlatan Ibrahimovic and 318,000 euros for various expenses, including 53,000 euros paid out by a bodyguard with a club credit card.

The 53,000 euros “included non-justified expenses in restaurants during holiday periods, in bars and nightclubs,” a report from the auditing firm KPMG.

Laporta said he would “challenge (in court) this meeting of club members on Saturday because it harms my right, as former chairman, to explain these accounts,” he told a news conference.

“Everything can be explained and justified,” he said.

Laporta was Barcelona chairman from 2003 to 2010. Under his guidance Barcelona won the Champions League twice and the Spanish league four times making it the most successful period in the club’s history.

On June 13, Sandro Rosell, who was on the club’s board between 2003 and 2005 but who fell out with Laporta over the way the club was being run, was elected to replace him as chairman,

The new board announced in July that the club had posted a loss last season of just over 77 million euros, its first in seven years, and not a profit of 11 million euros as claimed by the previous board a month earlier.