The Catalan Supreme Court has ordered Barcelona Football Club to pay 296,450 euros in compensation to Pancho Schröder, who served as financial director under Josep Maria Bartomeu. Schröder stopped pursuing further claims after Joan Laporta was dismissed shortly after becoming club president in 2021. An internal Barça inquiry into payments to companies linked to Enríquez Negreira revealed substantial sums in Schröder’s final year in office, according to El Periódico de España of the Prensa group in Iberia.
According to the sentence reported by this publication, Schröder was unfairly dismissed on 18 June 2021, and Barça must compensate him with 296,450 euros. The court found that the compensation covers fixed annual salary plus 30 percent of variable pay, while Schröder argues that performance bonuses should also be included. An appeal to the Social Division of the Supreme Court could consolidate the doctrine, challenging the Social Court 32 ruling in Barcelona.
Schröder, who played a central role in the club during Bartomeu’s tenure and oversaw Barça’s financial operations, was part of the leadership during a period when relations with Negreira began to fray. The article notes the broader context of scrutiny surrounding payments tied to Enríquez Negreira and the club’s finances during those years.
Wanted to investigate payments to Negreira
In November 2016, Infolibre reported that Oscar Grau, Barça’s then executive director, ordered one of the implicated companies to halt payments pending discussions with Albert Soler, the Professional Sports Director. Shortly after, Schröder, serving as financial director, pressed the board chairman for a detailed history of the club’s payments to three firms connected to the senior referee figure involved in the case. The delay did not end the association, as Barça and Enríquez Negreira did not part ways until 2018.
Within the Negreira investigation, Schröder was not among the directors criminally accused, though Oscar Grau faced prosecution. A letter to the former CEO outlined alleged corruption offenses, including unfair administration and document falsification among sports executives. Grau faced a potential prison term of up to ten years, with penalties comparable to those faced by Bartomeu and Soler. Other figures tied to the case, such as Sandro Rosell and José María Enríquez Negreira, could face up to seven years in prison.
Nearly half a million in salary in the last year
According to a decision by the First Chamber of the Catalan Supreme Court, accessed by El Periódico de España, Schröder’s fixed salary increased from 190,000 euros in October 2015 to 220,000 euros at the time of his dismissal in 2021. Yet the variable portion of his contract was equally significant, sometimes outweighing the fixed salary. A year before his departure, Schröder’s total earnings reached 462,044 euros, including about 200,000 euros in general bonuses, around 17,400 euros in variable wages, and 14,800 euros in retroactive bonuses that may reflect compensation related to the King’s Cup win in 2020-2021 season.
The former manager later became president of the Real Club de Golf El Prat de Barcelona and was among those who pushed for funding for Barça’s Espai Barça project. On December 23, 2019, Barcelona added a three-year bonus of 90,000 euros to Schröder’s contract and created a special section tied to the Camp Nou redevelopment: 145,200 euros for the refinancing approval process and 74,800 euros if the 25-year refinancing was approved. The total equaled an extra fixed annual salary of 220,000 euros. It remains unclear whether El Periódico was able to confirm receipt of these sums despite parliamentary approval of Espai Barça’s financing of 1.5 billion euros, obtained four months after Schröder’s dismissal.
Sewer rat
Schröder is noted as a participant in a WhatsApp executive group associated with Josep Maria Bartomeu, which, according to Mossos d’Esquadra, became a focal point in the broader contract leakage investigation involving figures like Leo Messi and Gerard Piqué. The group reportedly included Oscar Grau, Javier Sobrino, Schröder, Román Gómez, and other Barça executives. Leaked chats published by El Periódico de Catalunya depict disparaging terms used to describe club stars, highlighting tensions and the internal disputes surrounding contracts and corporate governance. These revelations form part of the wider scrutiny into Barça’s leadership and the contracts tied to major players during that era, as reported by the Prensa Ibérica group’s coverage of the case.