The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the company of the former vice-president of referees who was paid by Barça for advice

BarcelonaIn recent years, and especially since football has been professionalized to the extreme, it is common for referees to have a direct relationship with the clubs, to the point of being on the payroll once they have hung up the whistle . It is, for example, what Real Madrid did with Carlos Mejía Dávila, who joined the white club’s staff once he retired from refereeing. They are collegiates who carry out advisory tasks for the clubs, from analyzing the matches to go through the possible cards to studying the referees and preparing the footballers to know how they should behave on the field of play. In most of the big European clubs there is this type of figure – which does not necessarily make a former first-level referee. At Barça, too. The club currently manages this arbitration analysis through Ricardo Segura, a former member who joined the football area in 2018. But until then, and at least since 2001, when the president was Joan Gaspart, this task was done by José María Enríquez Negreira. The fact is that while the former Primera member was invoicing Barça through his company Dasnil 95, he also held the position of vice-president of the Technical Referees College (CTA). A body that, for example, is in charge of arbitral appointments.

The Prosecutor’s Office is now studying the payments made by Barça to Enríquez Negreira’s company in the period 2016-2018, during which the club paid 1.4 million euros. An investigation that has advanced the SER and that has set off all the alarms, both in the club and in the arbitration. Although Barça has acknowledged that there was this contractual relationship, from the Barça club they categorically deny that it was in exchange for any arbitration favor and maintain that it was simply about advisory tasks. However, what has generated surprise are the amounts: “This is a common practice in Europe, yes. But not with these amounts,” points out Joan Fàbregas, journalist and soccer referee. “30 years ago there might not have been so many guarantees, but today it is unthinkable to buy an arbitrator. And if someone promises it, he is taking people’s hair,” he adds, denying the ghosts about alleged arbitral favors. In fact, Barça, in its statement, has gone so far as to threaten legal action “against anyone who damages the image of the club with possible insinuations contrary to the reputation of the entity that may arise as a result of this information”.

The service was discontinued in 2018

The case starts precisely in 2018, the year in which Enríquez Negreira leaves his post at the CTA. That same year, Barça canceled the relationship with Dasnil 95 – which, according to the club’s invoices, had existed since at least 2001. From that moment on, and since the Barcelona team was its main client, the company stopped invoicing and received an inspection from the Treasury. As ARA has learned, Enríquez Negreira leaves the investigators perplexed when he answers that he “paid but did nothing”. Actually, he meant that the one who was in charge of doing the work was his son, who is also called José María. In this way, the father was the owner of the company but the son was the sole administrator. In any case, the Treasury decides to send the case to the Prosecutor’s Office, which begins the investigation. The proceedings are number 194/22 and were extended in November 2022, confirm sources from the Prosecutor’s Office.

ARA has contacted Josep Maria Bartomeu, president of Barça between 2014 and 2020, who has clarified that this service was already underway long before he took charge of the club. In fact, he maintains that he was linked to the sports area and that he only became aware of it when, in 2018, and at the suggestion of Òscar Grau (CEO) and Pep Segura (sports director), they proposed making cuts in the football area and decide to do without their services. “They were reports for each match where the refereeing was analysed. They were also in charge of making the appeals when there was a card based on the video evidence”, comments the former president, who has already testified before the Prosecutor’s Office . The bills were increasing and in 2017 they reached 541,752 euros, details the SER. In 2018, the service runs until June and Barça pays a total of 318,200 euros. Also that summer, a new CTA was formed and Enríquez Negreira ceased to be the number two of the Spanish referees.

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