FC Barcelona rejects the club's accusation of the crime of bribery issued by the judge investigating the Negreira case. In an appeal signed by the club's lawyers, Cristóbal Martell and Marc Molins and to which La Vanguardia has had access, Barça considers that the facts being investigated do not fit "even remotely" into the crime of bribery because José María Enríquez Negreira does not He was a public official.
The main argument used by the investigating judge 1 of Barcelona to justify the incorporation of the crime of bribery in the investigation of the Negreira case was that the former vice president of the CTA had the status of a public official for criminal purposes since the Spanish Federation was a legal entity. public. "Neither does Negreira have the status of an official, nor an official for criminal purposes, nor does his activity in the Technical Committee of Referees bear the nature of exercising a public function," which leads to affirming that neither his conduct nor that of those who paid , in this case Barça, fit into the crime of bribery, the club's lawyers complain in the appeal.
Barcelona also reproaches the judge that the inclusion of the crime of bribery "puts a rear-view mirror that looks back to the year 2001, when the payments linked to Negreira and his businesses began and casts a shadow of suspicion and a "possible condition of being accused of other Junas and other management teams of FC Barcelona." The new criminal classification, "far from constituting a sterile style exercise, can produce a very relevant impact on the course and investigative development of the process in relation to time periods and people investigated," laments the club.
The judge's decision to open an investigation for bribery against Barça and former presidents Rosell and Bartomeu may lead to the indictment of president Joan Laporta since the crime could not be statute-barred. In its appeal, Barça demands that the judge continue the investigative line with which it had started and continue "under the investigative north of corruption in sport." This crime was incorporated into Spanish legislation in 2010, meaning that all events prior to that date cannot be considered corruption in sport.
The judge in the Negreira case charged Barça and the rest of the people investigated with a continued crime of bribery on September 28. He issued an order in which he considered it proven that "the payments made by FC Barcelona to José María Enríquez Negreira satisfied the interests of the club" and that "they produced the arbitration effects desired by FC Barcelona."
