Barça, Rosell and Bartomeu, investigated for bribery in the Negreira case

2023-09-28 10:07:17

BarcelonaImpulse in the Negreira case: the head of the court of inquiry number 1 in Barcelona, ​​Joaquín Aguirre, has charged Barça and former presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu for an alleged crime of bribery, as confirmed by judicial sources consulted by the ARA . It has been months since the court, first with a substitute magistrate and now with Aguirre again at the helm, has put the magnifying glass on the payments that the club made for years to the company of the former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA ) José María Enríquez Negreira and his son. Precisely this Thursday, the Civil Guard searched the premises of this entity, located at the headquarters of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), as it has progressed The newspaper and have been confirmed by police sources to this newsroom. The investigators have looked for documentation on the alleged corruption plot that is dotting the Barcelona entity.

Although the investigation has just begun, the judge is clear: he assures that the money that the club paid to Negreira and his son for eighteen years had to be used so that Barça benefited from the arbitration. It is the “logical deduction”, he says in a resolution to which the ARA has had access, from the fact that these payments to the companies of both increased from 70,000 euros to 700,000 per year and that they ended just when the father went to leave the position of vice president of the CTA. “From here it also follows that the payments produced the arbitration effects desired by FC Barcelona, ​​in such a way that there was an inequality of treatment with respect to other teams and the consequent systemic corruption in the Spanish arbitration as a whole”, he concludes the judge, although he also points out that it will have to be the Civil Guard who “confirms these extremes”.

Now, regardless of whether the investigators certify or not that the referees whistled in favor of Barça, the judge assures that “the crime of bribery was consummated” because the payments existed and the objective was to condition the arbitration decisions, “it is proven or not the systemic corruption of Spanish arbitration due to these payments”. In fact, the magistrate argues that the fact that other clubs could have made similar payments does not exonerate Barça either. “The custom (which has not been proven) does not make a fact legal”, points out the resolution, which encourages reporting and investigating other hypothetical bribes, “instead of filing the FC Barcelona case”.

The Prosecutor’s Office calculated in its complaint that Barça paid 7.3 million between 2001 and 2018 to Negreira’s companies for alleged consultancy work and considered that the purpose was to obtain the favors of the referees. In the report that the Civil Guard delivered to the court of inquiry number 1 of Barcelona, ​​it is concluded that the services that Negreira would have provided to Barça in exchange for this money were “completely false”. Barça has always assured that the Negreiras’ team and player advisory work existed, but the judge recalls that when the Tax Agency (which was the first body to put these payments under suspicion) fined the club for did not justify them as it should, Barça did not appeal against the decision, “which shows that these were not ordinary payments to a technician hired to perform a task of scouting (observer)”, argues the judge.

Change of crime in full investigation for the Negreira case

Both the former referee Estrada Fernández, who was the first to file a complaint against Negreira for the money collected from Barça, as well as the Prosecutor’s Office and the rest of the accusations that have gradually been added to the case held the former vice-president of the CTA responsible, Barça, Bartomeu and Rosell of a crime of corruption between individuals or sports corruption. But the judge considers that the facts being investigated in this case “fit” better with the characteristics of the crime of bribery. The reason is that he believes that the position that Negreira held for eighteen years at the CTA is comparable to that of a public official because the committee is part of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), which is legally considered a “public juridical entity “. “Consequently, its managers, including those who are part of the technical commissions, must be considered public officials for criminal purposes,” says the judge.

The comparison of Negreira with a public official means that the judge attributes to him a higher requirement of “impartiality” than a worker of a private entity and considers that his position was “incompatible” with the performance of other jobs of advice For the magistrate, the fact that Barça stopped payments to Negreira in 2018, precisely when he ceased to be vice-president of the CTA, is also key. Aguirre concludes that “it follows, at least indicatively, that the payments were made in consideration of the position he held”.

In fact, the resolution recalls that Negreira sent “an intimidating letter” to Bartomeu when he stopped receiving payments, telling him “that if they did not continue to pay him, he would reveal a series of facts that could seriously harm the club”. The judge concludes that Negreira was “aware that quite serious illegal acts had taken place in favor of FC Barcelona” either because he had participated “directly” in them, or because “he had very close knowledge of the people who would have How is it”.

Despite the forcefulness of the court decision, the investigation of the Negreira case is still at a very early stage. Until now, Barça, its ex-presidents and ex-directors and the Negreiras only had the status of defendants and the judge has never summoned them to testify.