On June 18th, the judge Jusé de la Mata agreed to hear a lawsuit lodged by the Brazilian company DIS against Barcelona, Sandro Rosell, Josep Maria Bartomeu, Santos and the São Paulo club's higher-ups, as well as Neymar, his father and one of the family's companies. The charges being pursued are private corruption and fraud. You can find the details of their complaint here.

In theory, DIS should be asking for that sum only from Santos, club with which they had a contract over Neymar’s economic rights and Barcelona shouldn’t have anything to do with the case. But it seems like the clubs felt that DIS would end up wanting more money than they got and this is the reason why the blaugrana club is involved.

Without any apparent reason, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu signed a document with Santos in which they undertook to pay 50% of any compensation due to DIS if a complaint was submitted and a court ruled in the company's favor.

Marca had access to the document, which is an addendum to the transfer paperwork signed by Barcelona and Santos when the deal went through, supposedly for €17.1m. The fourth point of the agreement reads as follows: "In the event that, in agreement with an arbitration award or a definitive court ruling, the sum to be paid is greater than the aforementioned amount [€6.84m], both clubs, Santos and Barcelona, shall be bound to pay half (that is to say, 50% each) of the monies exceeding this sum".

In principle, Santos should be the only one who was accused, because they were the club who did the division of Neymar’s rights. Barcelona seemed to understand it the same way in a statement released after the investment fund's legal case was approved, the blaugrana club argued the following: "In any event, the issues DIS are pursuing ought to be resolved with Santos.”

DIS believes that the 2 clubs acted together in order to prejudice the company. Their assumption is based on 2 contracts: one of them is the contract through which Barça acquired the right of first refusal over three Santos players in exchange for €7.9 million. This price is more than the market rate.

The other contract is for two friendly games played between the clubs: one was played in 2013 at the Gamper Trophy and the other one is supposed to be played in Brazil. In case the second game doesn’t happen, Barcelona are supposed to compensate Santos to the tune of €4.5 million.

The cumulated amount of these 2 contracts would mean €12.4 million. DIS believes that these two agreements were in fact ways of increasing the transfer fee while avoiding giving the company its cut, which would be almost €5 million in these particular instances.

DIS’s complaint also mentions the €40 million paid to one of Neymar Sr.’s companies for the player’s economic rights. DIS states that this was done behind their back at a time when they, along with Santos and another company names Teisa shared Neymar’s rights.