up to 20,000 euros withdrawn per month while collecting from Barça

BarcelonaAn entire generation of Barça leaders (2003-2023) is involved in an arbitration plot that has generated a scandal of enormous proportions and that was born at the end of the 90s, when Josep Lluís Núñez and Joan Gaspart still ruled the Camp Nou. An inspection by the Treasury has served to reveal that the Barcelona club paid over two decades nearly seven million euros in total to Dasnil 95 and Nilsad SCP, companies owned by the former referee and former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA ) José María Enríquez Negreira in exchange for reports on the work of the members. The Madrid newspaper The world has provided new details of the case. As published by the Madrid club this Thursday, the former referee would have been withdrawing up to 20,000 euros per month from his accounts during the years in which his contractual relationship with Barça was extended. It is not known, however, what he used this money for. The case is pending for the Prosecutor’s Office to prosecute it, a fact that could occur in the coming weeks.

In fact, this new information adds that the Prosecutor’s Office qualifies in its reports as “scandalous” these provisions. In total, it is estimated that Enríquez Negreira would have squandered a fortune of more than 6.6 million during this period in which he was collecting from Barça. Although the noise generated by the suspicions of the payment of arbitration favors has not stopped growing since SER Catalunya uncovered the controversy, the investigation remains mainly focused on the period 2016-2018, when the company Dasnil 95 received 1.6 million corresponding to 33 invoices sent to the Barcelona club, then chaired by Josep Maria Bartomeu, who in 2018 cut off the agreement with Negreira’s company, domiciled in Barcelona’s Guinardó district. This Thursday (2pm), the current president of the CTA, Luis Medina Cantalejo, and the general secretary of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Andreu Camps, are scheduled to appear before the press.

The scandal worries Barça’s investors

The scandal of the payments to the former vice-president of the referees has ended up having consequences for Barça beyond football: the shadow of suspicion has not pleased some of the investors who, with the help of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, wanted to finance Espai Barça. So much so that there are those who have left their participation in abeyance, as this newspaper published. If at the beginning of February everything seemed to be on track, with the construction company already chosen, the project defined and the Camp Nou works started – part of the third tier is missing -, March begins with maximum uncertainty.

“Everything is open”, they explain from the noble offices of the Camp Nou, where they even acknowledge that the possibility of waiting one more season to start the reform has already been put on the table, which would mean temporarily canceling the move to Montjuïc, planned for this summer, and recover the club’s income before embarking on what is defined internally as “the most ambitious project in Barça’s history” and “Barcelona’s most important work after of the Sagrada Família”.