Rosell: If I'd not been Barca president, I'd not have gone to prison

Former Barcelona president Sandro Rosell said that if he had not been Barcelona president he would not have been locked up in preventative prison for 643 days.

“If I had not been Barcelona president, I would not have gone to prison, of that I have no doubt at all,” Rosell told Mundo Deportivo in an interview, the first since coming out.

“I don’t think that nobody would have investigated me as a business, not spied on me, not would there have been such aggressive fiscal persecution that I still face, 72 acts from the tax office since I was chosen to be president of Barcelona. Before being president, zero financial inspections. Chance?”

Rosell arrived in 2003 and was sporting vice president under Laporta until 2005. In 2010 he ran for election and took over until 2014, when he stood down accused of corruption in the deal for Neymar. With charges including fraud and money laundering of nearly 20 million euros, he went into preventative prison in May 2017. He came out after nearly two years, absolved of guilt with the court believing the evidence was not conclusive.