The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office gives a boost to Barça and Joan Laporta by considering that the Negreira case cannot be investigated for a crime of bribery. The judge handling the matter, Joaquín Aguirre, considered that the payments he received from the José María Enríquez Negreira club could fit into bribery even though this is a crime reserved only for public officials. Barça, Laporta and the rest of those investigated, including Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, presented an appeal before the Barcelona Court to revoke the judge's decision since they completely reject his interpretation. The Prosecutor's Office, which had to rule on this issue, agrees with those investigated and believes that Negreira cannot be considered a public official. If the Court accepts the appeals and joins this thesis, Joan Laporta would be left out of the case.
Before the arrival of Judge Aguirre who took up the case after a period of leave, the investigation had always revolved around two crimes. Unfair administration, which means that extra prices were paid for a service that was provided or for a non-existent service, or sports corruption, which means having altered the competition. However, the judge changed the direction of the investigation by including the alleged commission of a bribery crime. This crime punishes a public official who accepts money to carry out an act contrary to the exercise of his position. Therefore, in order to introduce this crime, Negreira had to be considered a public official. To do this, the judge made a new legal pirouette: he had to consider the Spanish Federation as “a public entity for criminal purposes.”
“The Spanish Football Federation has the status of a public-legal entity for criminal purposes and its directors, including those who are part of technical commissions, must be considered public officials for criminal purposes,” the judge said. In this way, as Negreira was the vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees, an entity that depends on the Spanish Federation, the judge began to consider him a public official “for criminal purposes.” With the application of this crime that he later prescribed, he managed to include Laporta among those investigated whose actions had always been considered prescribed.
