Josep Lluís Núñez, Joan Gaspart, Joan Laporta, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu under their respective presidencies paid hundreds of thousands of euros to the company Dasnil 95, whose owner is José María Enríquez Negreira, former president of the Spanish Referees Committee between 1994 and 2018, until reaching the figure of seven million. The news, uncovered by the program Què t'hi jugues of Cadena Ser, may have criminal consequences due to the investigation by the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office into possible irregularities in the taxation of the aforementioned company and even corruption between individuals, but, beyond From the judicial outcome of the case, it is obvious that the image of the Barça club is damaged, and this time it will not give rise to fights between trenches and Barcelona families because they all appear dotted.
The origin
“In the eighties and nineties it was normal for clubs like Real Madrid and Barça to give gifts to referees before matches. In those years the referees did not earn large salaries as they do now and the entertainment was accepted normally. The more expensive the gift was, with luxury watches for example, the more the referee's performance could be conditioned”. The testimony is from a retired journalist who prefers not to reveal his name and who experienced those practices very closely. With Núñez in the presidency (1978-2000), the link with the Enríquez Negreira company began, a manufacturer of key rings and pins that the club bought to add to the basket of objects delivered to the referees. Nothing was asked of them in return, it was simply a custom assumed naturally. Sometimes, yes, it went further. "I know a president of the First Division who offered a referee with a very sick son a treatment abroad that was fully paid for and that is not offered in exchange for anything," recalls the same journalist.
From pins to reports
From the investigations carried out by the Prosecutor's Office, it can be deduced that the jump from pins and key rings to arbitration reports could have come with the accession to the presidency of Joan Gaspart (2000-03). Enríquez Negreira did not provide documentary evidence of those reports in his statement because at the beginning the advice was strictly verbal. What did Barça get in return? Enríquez Negreira has described it as "neutrality" and the first directives of Barça, convinced that Real Madrid always had the arbitration favor by default and without lifting a finger, accepted Enríquez Negreira's "I control" as a guarantee that the referees would not go against him. Of course, in exchange for an exorbitant price that has raised the worst suspicions. But, did Enríquez Negreira have enough power as vice president of the Committee to guarantee that influence? It is true that he was never part of the Appointment Committee, the body that decided which referees would act in each game, but it is false that he did not paint anything as has been made to understand.
More work, more fee
It was later, with the incorporation as administrator of Javier Enríquez Romero, son of Enríquez Negreira, to his father's company, when the arbitration reports began to be documented and delivered on a weekly basis and usually in DVD format. Enríquez Júnior made them for the Barça first team and for the subsidiary. The coaches appreciated them but they took up only minutes of their time. It was enough to notice if this or that referee was more or less susceptible to the protests of the players, without more.
In the first term of Joan Laporta (2003-10) the rate increased considerably and both under the presidency of Rosell (2010-14) and under that of Bartomeu (2014-20) it remained unchanged, although the latter would break the relationship in 2018, provoking great anger from Enríquez Negreira first through a call to the then president and later through a burofax full of threats revealed by El Mundo.
A "usual" service
Enríquez Negreira ceased to be vice president of the Referees Committee precisely in 2018, although Bartomeu's management team maintains to this newspaper that their services were dispensed with "an austerity policy" and not because of that circumstance. Gaspart, Laporta and Bartomeu have not denied the payments these days in different statements to the media but have assured that it was a common service in elite football and that it was never intended to obtain any favor in return. Sandro Rosell, consulted by La Vanguardia, assures that he will not make statements until he has all the information to be able to comment. The invoices, sent through the technical area of the club, which was theoretically the one that requested it, never went through the approval of the respective boards of directors.
A lot of money
Taking the section investigated by the Prosecutor's Office for its investigation, which runs from 2016 to 2018, an approximate cost calculation can be made for each arbitration report. In 2017, the payment of 541,752 euros to the Dasnil 95 company is documented. Admitting (although it is a lot to admit) that 40 percent of the services were of a different nature (player monitoring, etc.) and considering that Barça played some 55 matches that year, to which about 40 more from the subsidiary would have to be added, Enríquez Negreira's company obtained about 3,000 euros per report. A week, adding all the concepts, the figure rose to about 10,000 euros. Money that the Barça partner was never aware of.
