Barcelona president Sandro Rosell brought to an end his three-and-a-half year spell in charge of the club by announcing his resignation on Thursday.

Pressure had mounted on Rosell, 49, after a Spanish judge agreed on Wednesday to hear a case made against him by one of the club’s own members for alleged misappropriation of funds in the deal which took Brazilian star Neymar to the club last year.

Sporting vice-president Josep Maria Bartomeu will replace Rosell as president for the remainder of the board’s mandate, which runs until 2016.

Rosell had routinely insisted that the 21-year-old Neymar cost the club 57 million euros ($A88 million), but refused to divulge how much money each of the parties to the deal received on confidentiality grounds.

That led Barcelona member Jordi Cases to launch the case against Rosell last month, suggesting 40 million euros ($A61 million) of the fee was supposedly paid to a business owned by Neymar and his father called N&N.