FC Barcelona, as can be seen from the Prosecutor's investigation and La Vanguardia has been able to certify by sources from the club itself, paid for advisory services to the company DASNIL 95, owned by José María Enriquez Negreira, vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees between 1994 and 2018, already since the last years of the presidency of Josep Lluís Núñez. All the presidents that succeeded him (Joan Laporta, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu) maintained the contractual relationship with Enríquez Negreira, although for different reasons, paying different amounts (a total of seven million euros since 2001 according to El País) and using as interlocutor, in recent years, Javier Enríquez Romero, son of Enríquez Negreira and administrator of the company.
Josep Maria Bartomeu, president of FC Barcelona between 2015 and 2020, considers the commotion caused after the Cadena SER program Què t'hi jugues uncovered the payments, in the case of his mandate of 532,728.02 euros in in 2016, 541,752 euros in 2017 and 318,200 euros in 2018, rates that were predetermined by the previous presidency, that of Joan Laporta. Bartomeu denies to La Vanguardia that the operations had to do with an attempt to try to influence the arbitrations. "It is absolutely false and absurd to think that we bought any referee, there is nothing to hide." The former president recalls that the payments were made in exchange for "usual" arbitration reports in the world of football and that they were sued by the technical area. “The reports exist, they were delivered to both the first team and Barça B before each game to comment on aspects about the referee they were playing. The coaches and players appreciated them." “If we had influenced the referees – adds Bartomeu – they would not have disallowed a goal on the last day against Atlético that gave us a League, it is absurd to think that. And I could give more examples”.
Bartomeu acknowledges that the person who prepared the aforementioned reports, in DVD format, was always Javier Enríquez Romero, son of Enríquez Negreira. “Not only did he make these types of reports, he also advised us on other matters, he was a very good professional. I barely had contact with his father, ”he says. In 2018, together with the general director Òscar Grau and the entity's general manager, Pep Segura, they decided to assume all this advice internally, without outsourcing it to cut costs, although coinciding with the end of Enríquez Negreira's stage as vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees. "It was coincidence," says Bartomeu, who does assume, for his part and by extension all the presidents involved, certain doubts "of an ethical nature" about what was done, but never "of a legal nature." "The payments were high, yes," he admits.
Since the Prosecutor's Office began the investigation of the case for alleged corruption between individuals (prompted by the Treasury's warning against alleged non-payments by the DASNIL 95 company), a large number of testimonies have been declaring, including Bartomeu himself. Despite the fact that reports made by DASNIL 95 have been presented to the Prosecutor's Office to justify the payments, there are a few years, especially corresponding to the beginning of the contractual relationship between both parties, in which the advisory work was "verbal" and therefore without the possibility of accrediting.
