Judge Silvia López Mejía has proposed to investigate all the payments that Barça made to José María Enríquez Negreira from the beginning to the end. In a letter that she sent to the parties yesterday, the magistrate informed that she extends the inquiries to the origin of the case, from 2001, when Negreira was allegedly hired by the club, to 2018, when the relationship ended after Negreira left his position on the Technical Committee of Referees. This implies that the investigation will also include the period of the presidencies of Joan Gaspart and Joan Laporta, which until now had been left aside because it was considered that the crime had expired.
The investigation focused only on the period considered to have not expired, from 2013 to 2018, and included the presidencies of Rosell and Bartomeu. Does this mean that Gaspart and Laporta will be investigated and may end up facing criminal charges in the case? The judge, at the moment, does not clarify it and prefers to wait to know the result of the investigation.
The magistrate also charges Negreira's son, Javier Enríquez, who had also been left out of the case because the Prosecutor's Office had proposed him as a simple witness. The decision was taken after La Liga demanded the inclusion as an accused of the son of the former vice-president of the referees, since he also paid FC Barcelona to draw up reports on the referees.
Another of the moves that the judge made yesterday is to decree the secrecy of the actions, a measure that implies that those under investigation will not have access to the proceedings that the Civil Guard is carrying out, whether they are telephone interventions or entrances and searches in different headquarters for clarify where the 7.3 million euros that Negreira received from FC Barcelona went.
The judge also expands the investigation into the commission of an alleged money laundering crime with the aim of clarifying whether the money the former referee received was diverted and directed to other purposes.
The Public Prosecutor's Office suspects that the Barça club's payments to Negreira were made with the aim of him carrying out "actions tending to favor FC Barcelona in the decision-making of the referees in the matches played" and in the "results of the competitions" . In one of her first decisions, the judge ordered the Civil Guard to clarify where the millions of euros that Negreira invoiced to FC Barcelona had gone and that they were not used to increase his wealth.
