The judge in the Negreira case has charged Barça and the rest of the people investigated with a continuing crime of bribery. The head of the investigating court 1 of Barcelona, Joaquín Aguirre, has issued an order in which he considers it proven that "the payments made by FC Barcelona to José María Enríquez Negreira satisfied the interests of the club" and "he also deduces that the payments produced the refereeing effects desired by FC Barcelona". The judge also has no doubt that Barça paid Negreira "for the position he held as vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA)" and describes it as "inadmissible" for a vice president of the CTA "to advise a specific First Division team." Division and that he carried out such advice in response to the amounts that FC Barcelona paid him annually. Those charged so far, Sandro Rosell, Josep Maria Bartomeu, Òscar Grau and Albert Soler, as well as the Negreiras, father and son, must respond for this crime, which carries sentences of up to six years in prison. In the case of Barça, they should face a financial fine. And it is also worth noting that it is a crime that is tried by popular jury, so if accused of this crime were to sit in the dock it would be before nine ordinary citizens. The judge, however, does not close the door to maintaining the previous charges of sports corruption. If finally accused of this crime, FC Barcelona as a club would face the payment of a fine, judicial intervention, and in the last and unlikely case, the dissolution of the entity.
The incorporation of this new crime of bribery to the case is due to the fact that the judge considers that the Spanish Football Federation is at a criminal level "a legal-public entity and that the managers, including those who are part of technical commissions, (such as the Negreira case) must be considered as "public officials for criminal purposes."
The judge highlights that "the payment by FC Barcelona to Enríquez Negreira or his son Javier Enríquez can be considered made in response to the position held by the former since the payments continued for approximately 18 years, increasing from the initial €70,000 to €700,000 annually; FC Barcelona stopped paying as soon as Negreira ceased as vice president of the CTA," he concludes.
The magistrate points out that "even if one or more other teams had also made similar payments, the conduct of FC Barcelona would continue to show signs of crime, since the repetition by other clubs of an illicit act does not make said act lawful, since custom ( which has not been proven) does not make a fact legal. If it were demonstrated that other clubs have also paid vice presidents of the CTA, criminal actions should be initiated against them, instead of shelving that of FC Barcelona."
Sources from FC Barcelona have assured that the club's legal services and its criminal team have already contemplated this hypothesis and that they have been working on all aspects of this case from day one.
The inclusion of the new continued crime of bribery could put Joan Laporta in trouble, who could end up being charged in this case. Until now, the president of FC Barcelona was excluded because the crimes he was accused of were unfair administration and sports corruption, whose statute of limitations was ten years, meaning the judge could only investigate the payments to Negreira made from 2013 to 2018. Hence, the only presidents investigated are Sandro Rosell and Josep María Bartomeu. However, the continued crime of bribery in its most serious form may mean that the statute of limitations is 15 years, which would cover the period from 2008 to 2018, with Laporta also being able to be investigated.
This Thursday morning, the Civil Guard is carrying out a search at the headquarters of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) regarding the Negreira case. According to El Confidencial, the Armed Institute, by order of the judge, is looking for documents that are related to the payments of FC Barcelona to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees, José María Enríquez Negreira, for a total of 7.3 million euros, accredited by the Tax Agency and the Prosecutor's Office, between 2001 and 2018. Specifically, it seeks minutes of the meetings in which Negreira participated and determine what his capacity to influence was in the appointment and promotion of arbitrators. Luís Medina Cantalejo, president of the CTA, stated that Negreira lacked decision-making capacity within the organization and that he played a role of mere representation.
The search has been ordered by the head of the investigating court number 1 of Barcelona, Joaquín Aguirre, who in an order issued at the beginning of September, expressed his suspicions about the existence of systemic corruption in the Technical Committee of Referees. He assured in his resolution that there were no indications that FC Barcelona had paid for a specific match but he suspected that Negreira "supervised the qualification and appointment of referees so that those related to him would officiate relevant matches in the League, the Cup or matches international". He reminded the judge that for those games the referees were paid more and that this would be "illegitimate remuneration for soccer referees."
