Joan Laporta says that Barça has “never” bought referees and accuses Javier Tebas of wanting to “cheat the club”

BarcelonaThe Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office is determined to sue Barça as a legal entity and the club’s former president Josep Maria Bartomeu (2014-2020) for the irregularities linked to the payments he made to various companies in the former vice-president of the Technical Arbitration Committee (CTA) José María Enríquez Negreira. As it has progressed The country and has been able to confirm the ARA, the complaint will be for disloyal administration and continued corruption in the field of business, a crime that entered into force after the reform of the Penal Code in 2010 and that includes fraud in the field of sports . In addition to Barça and Bartomeu himself, actions are also expected against those responsible for the payments of the previous Barça government and also against Negreira, who collected around 7 million euros from Barça through companies that were his change of advisories for which there is no evidence or proven and frequent evidence among the club’s sporting officials over the last few years.

The proceedings, initiated at the beginning of 2022 at the behest of a tax inspection of the former Catalan referee, have been accelerated after the complaint filed a few days ago by VAR member Xavier Estrada Fernández. The mystery surrounding the reason for Barça’s payments has not been 100% clarified, although official records indicate that the activity of Dasnil 95 and Nisdal SCP was mainly instrumental, as they did not show profits despite the juicy income that they had every year Dasnil was paid mostly between 2015 and 2018, when Bartomeu broke off the relationship. Nisdal operated between 2005 and 2015, with three presidents: Joan Laporta, Sandro Rosell and Bartomeu himself. In his statement with tax officials, Negreira assured that Barça paid him to ensure that the referees would be “neutral” during their League and Copa del Rey matches. The ex-collegiate, on the other hand, decided not to collaborate with the Prosecutor’s Office, citing an Alzheimer’s principle.

Once the complaint is formalized (expected to be between this Wednesday and this Thursday), it will be necessary for a court in Barcelona to study it and decide whether to accept it as a procedure to begin the corresponding investigation. The people under scrutiny are Barça as a legal entity, which already accepted a sentence in 2015 for the Neymar 1 case; Bartomeu as ex-president of the most recent payments, and Enríquez Negreira as beneficiary. Laporta, involved in the case for the payments made in his first mandate, and accused by Bartomeu of multiplying them by four, has ordered an external audit to clarify the facts.

Of course, in a press conference at the Círculo Ecuestre de Barcelona held on the day that marks two years since his return to the presidency of Barça, Joan Laporta referred to the subject without going into many details. “We have prepared a press conference to talk about it. But Barça has never dedicated itself to buying referees and influencing them. Never, absolutely never. We will give the necessary explanations. But nothing is a coincidence. All this comes out when we’re starting to do well. We’ve saved the club sportingly, financially we’re focusing on it and I see that only negative news comes out. Articles that I don’t even want to comment on, that attack me personally, and opinions against the concession of the Camp Nou works to Limak… All these news I observe hide a desire to control Barça on the part of the League and CVC”.

Deep reputational damage caused by the Negreira case

Despite Laporta’s speech, the scandal of the payments to the former vice-president of the referees has ended up having consequences beyond football: the shadow of suspicion has not pleased some of the investors who, with the help of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, they wanted to finance Espai Barça. So much so that there are those who have left their participation in abeyance, as ARA reported a few days ago. In the same vein, SER Catalunya explained that the reputational crisis makes the financing operation of the new Camp Nou more expensive by 12 million euros per year, in a context of a general increase in interest rates and a downgrade of the rating until the BBB category due to recent changes in the structure of the operation.

Despite these obstacles in the wheel, Laporta maintains his traditional optimism: “We already have the financing, but we have a couple of alternatives that we want to study because everything can be improved. We don’t see the interests they want to apply to us. We have given a deadline until March 31 with an extension of an extra month. The most important thing for us is to be out of the stadium for a year and four months, only. If the works go well and there are no imponderables, we will have the stadium completed in June 2026”. The president is also adamant about Limak’s award: “Only they guarantee us to return to the Camp Nou with 70% of the capacity at the end of 2024, with the museum functioning. Limak has accepted the maximum guaranteed price, but the other competitors as well. The difference is in the contingencies and the price of the drafting of the project, for example. The other two proposals made us pay for them. For Limak, this work is quite a challenge.”

In the same talk at Círculo Ecuestre, Laporta admitted that he met with Jorge Messi to discuss a “tribute” to the former Barça player. “It’s not a matter of calés, it’s a tribute”, he limited himself to assuring about the Argentine, who ends his contract with PSG and has not yet signed anything. The president of Barça announced that he intends to renew Xavi Hernández as coach and make a proposal for Sergio Busquets to continue one more year in the Barça squad. On the other hand, he has recognized that the club is overpaid in terms of wages according to the League’s regulations and that, for this reason, it will be difficult to carry out major market operations this summer.