The owner of I3 Ventures, Carlos Ibáñez, he assured in his statement on Tuesday in the cause of 'Barçagate' that the creation of the profiles of the social networks that would have defamed characters from the Barça environment were part of the contract with FC Barcelona, as legal sources explained to EFE.
Before the Court of Instruction 13 of Barcelona Ibanez, who is being investigated for possible unfair administration and corruption between individuals, did not respond to questions about the accusations and He said that these profiles on social networks were a service that only accounted for between 3 and 4% of the work he did for Barça.
In addition, the businessman admitted to being aware of Facebook profiles such as 'Jaume, a horror film', dedicated to the founder of Mediapro, Jaume roures, but stressed that the objective of the contract with Barça was to protect the reputation of the entity and not defamation.
Ibanez, who declared for two hours, argued that he adapted to the organization chart of the club and that is why he divided the invoices between different areas of the Barça entity.
This commission was made by the then general director of Barça, Óscar Grau, who is also under investigation in this case and was replaced from this position with the arrival to the presidency of Joan Laporta.
In reference to the statements of workers of I3 Ventures before the Mossos d'Esquadra, assuring that the protection of Bartomeu's image was given priority over that of Barça, Ibáñez argued that, although the client is the company, who is really He usually attacks the president of the same and within his work was to defend this management to protect the institution.
On the other hand, he said that I3 Ventures detected a significant number of 'bots' (fake profiles) on Twitter that were dedicated to attacking Bartomeu and the club during his presidency.
According to him, behind them were the then presidential candidates Joan Laporta and Víctor Font, and businessman Jaume Roures. Ibáñez's job, he pointed out, was to control this damage.
And he gave a very graphic example of the publications of the profiles of the social networks that he controlled I3 Ventures and that they spoke of the former Barça coach Pep Guardiola: “If they attack Valverde, I say that Guardiola has not won anything for three years. But this is not defamation. “
At the first meeting between I3 Ventures and Barça, which took place in October 2017, according to Ibáñez, the club was present Bartomeu, Masferrer, Grau and Pancho Schröder, the finance director. In addition, he said that who put them in contact was the company Telampartner in exchange for taking 15% of the amount of the contract.
The conglomerate owner Nicestream (of which I3Ventures is part) also stated that, when Barça terminated his contract on February 18, 2020, the day after the 'Barçagate' case was published on Cadena SER, the club itself asked him to continue working for another month, but the state of alarm over the coronavirus pandemic prevented it.