The Barca storm has become tougher since the ‘Negreira case’ was uncovered, a corruption case that links the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), with Barça, a club from which he allegedly received seven million euros by reports between 2001 and 2018. The Catalan team, chaired by Joan Laporta, prefers to wait for Justice to speak before speaking. Those who couldn’t take it anymore were the referees, who wanted to show their faces in a massive press conference in which the general secretary of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Andreu Camps, and the president of the CTA, Luis Medina Cantalejo, they sent a message of unity against the news that splashes the arbitration body.
The referees of all categories – 240 members of the arbitration group – were present. Except for one, Xavier Estrada Fernández, current Primera referee and more specifically VAR, who wanted to wage war on his behalf after suing Enríquez Negreira and his son directly. A complaint that does not seem to have sat well with the referees since after the appointments for this day, he has been separated.
Camps has referred to the referee who did not send the information required by the RFEF’s integrity department, not as a traitor, but rather as the one who leaked to the press the questions that were sent to the referees. Likewise, he has referred to a person “with governmental responsibilities” who was aware of the facts and did nothing about it. To questions from the press, Rubiales’ number 2 avoided pointing to Albert Soler, former director of Barça and former Secretary of State for Sport in two periods (2008-2011 and 2021-2023). The referees will put themselves in the hands of all appropriate instances, including UEFA – which has requested information – so that this situation is investigated until the end.
«There has only been talk of a vice president, his son and Barcelona. There is no evidence that a referee is dishonest. If there has been anything, it is related to people who no longer belong to this house. This is a shame,” said the president of the referees, for whom this day is “the saddest day in arbitration.”
«The damage has already been done and we have the stain here, the only thing left for us is to work, continue training, for the games to come out, and make ourselves available to both the integrity and the Prosecutor’s institutions. Let no one make a mistake, the one who has the greatest interest in this being clarified and that if there have been guilty parties they will be punished with the utmost rigor, it is we, the arbitrators”, explained Cantalejo, who affirmed together with Andreu Camps that, as soon as the complaint de Estrada Fernández is admitted for processing, the RFEF will appear in the case.
«I confirm that the questionnaire published by some media is correct. We are surprised and saddened by the actions of some CTA member because this has happened. The RFEF lawyers understood that filing a legal complaint against this fact would be counterproductive, since it would paralyze the prosecutor’s investigation of the case,” explained the general secretary of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Andreu, during the event. fields.
???? This is the manifesto that has been read by Mr. pic.twitter.com/tQRgTr2la8
— RFEF (@rfef) March 2, 2023
«On the occasion of the election of Luis Rubiales, the RFEF approved the creation of an internal Integrity department. It states that there should be no conflict of interest. The new president dismissed all the members of the Committee, among whom was Mr. Negreira,” said Camps, who went into detail that if a complaint has not been filed at this point, “it is because what we have are conjectures, which are taking shape by the investigation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. We have accessed from the general secretariat collecting the information that appears in the annual accounts. After this analysis, we deduce several aspects: the company Dansil 95 SL. billed some amounts since 1999. We have verified if said billing was for proven cases, and it has been so. We have verified invoices from Soccercamp SL, between 2006-2010. The services were also provided, essentially, to the technical bodies of the national teams.
“The Public Prosecutor formulated two inquiries, first, about what were the functions of Enríquez Negreira and what were the method of arbitral appointment”. The role of the Federation should be none other than to contribute to helping the Tax Agency and the Public Prosecutor’s Office”, pointed out the second of Luis Rubiales.
Suspicions about Barça
Barça’s reputation is not going through a good moment. No one has formally accused the Barça club of buying the referees, but having the vice president of the referees on the payroll for years will put it on a platter for the fans who face the Barça when they see something strange about the green. Suspicions that it is a club with which the referees and federations have been friendly grow at the rate that its fans hide behind the usual victimhood to say that the one who has historically favored the referees has been Real Madrid. They argue that the club is in conflict with the League for the so-called financial ‘fair play’, which forced Laporta, upon reaching the presidency in his second term, to decapitalize a part of the club and activate the famous ‘levers’ to be able to sign . The club goes to war against the LFP, which he has denounced in a Barcelona court. The club’s support for the Super League confronts him with Thebes.
That Barça spent two years (79 league games, between 2016 and 2018) without being awarded a penalty, while paying Enríquez Negreira, invites unleash theories to unleash. Whatever comes out of this matter, will have no consequences. The club will not lose points or be relegated to the second division, as Juventus once did, because in Spain, as the Government and the League have already recalled, very serious offenses prescribe after three years. «There are indications to investigate Barça criminally. They are strange and unusual events and they have to be clarified in the Prosecutor’s Office, “claimed the president of LaLiga a few days ago, Javier Tebas, who insisted that Barcelona cannot be sanctioned from sport, but can be sanctioned in the ordinary courts of justice. «The best thing is that it is clarified in the criminal field. If Barcelona has been cheated by Enríquez Negreira, let him be condemned, and if the club has been implicated, let him pay the consequences. It would not surprise me either if he has been cheated, as I see it, “said the top leader of the club employers’ association.