The Tax Agency has no proof that Barça bought the referees or that the more than 7 million that it paid to José María Enríquez Negreira, during his time as vice president of the national committee of referees, served to influence the results of the matches. This is the conclusion reached by the Treasury a year ago, after the Prosecutor’s Office discovered the contracts between Barça and the former vice president of the referees, who received millionaire emoluments from the Barça entity between 2001 and 2018. This is stated in the summary of the case, to which this newspaper has had access. This does not mean that the case is closed, far from it. And it is that, days ago, a new investigation began, after the court number 1 of Barcelona admitted for processing a complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office against Barça, against Negreira and against the former presidents Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell and some senior officials of the entity. In the case of the Prosecutor’s Office, the person who has taken charge of the case is Anti-Corruption, so new revelations may come out.
At the moment, what can be seen from the summary is that the Tax Agency has not been able to prove that Negreira provided confidential information, despite the fact that, for example, it has come to light, that Barça learned three months before the Cup final against Alavés, in 2017, that the referee would be Clos Gómez, the same one who is in the eye of the madridismo hurricane for his performance from the VAR room in the last classic. Knowing the referee beforehand does not give sporting advantages, from the outset, but it can serve as evidence for a judge to determine that Barça obtained privileges from Negreira from a sporting point of view. The Tax Agency also concludes, according to the summary, that Negreira’s departure from the Technical Committee of Referees could be “motivated by some punishable conduct.”
The Treasury has also been able to corroborate that the former vice president of the referees withdrew half a million euros in cash between 2016 and 2019. This circumstance proves nothing, only that he had a lot of economic liquidity, but it can open a line of investigation into what he could do with That money and if indicatively it served him to make payments to third parties, which would put the Barça entity in a very difficult situation, which continues without giving explanations. In the report that the Treasury delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office, the treasury is surprised that the former arbitration leader, despite his million-dollar collaboration with the culé club, did not see his assets increase, which is more than suspicious. Negreira stated that the ultimate goal is for the referees not to go against Barça, for everything to be “neutral.” “I never paid any referee or former referee with what I received from Barcelona,” he told the Tax Agency.
The blaugrana club has opted for silence. For now, he has hired two of the best lawyers in Barcelona to defend him. Andreu van den Eynde, Junqueras’ lawyer in the ‘procés’ trial, a criminal expert, has been commissioned to carry out an internal investigation, from a financial point of view. Cristóbal Martell, an expert in tax crimes, who already defended Messi in the trial for which he was sentenced to 21 months in jail for tax fraud, will be the club’s lawyer in the case open in the Barcelona court. Martell also leads the defense of Alves, accused of rape. He is an expert in reaching out-of-court settlements. “I will have time to explain who, why and how they want to orchestrate this campaign,” Joan Laporta said days ago. The president is waiting for him to advance the investigation to give explanations. Meanwhile, he appeals to victimhood and talks about an orchestrated campaign whose ultimate goal is for Barça to become a public limited company and can be controlled from outside.
There is no proof that Barça, according to the summary documents, paid the referees to whistle for them, but it is proven that the club paid the vice president of the arbitration group. It has been proven that Negreira’s company made a follow-up report on Real Madrid’s arbitration decisions, also that it made videos of the Barça players and their relationship with arbitration decisions or reports with advice from the extrecilla towards the culé entity, such as the one that He urges him to “take great care” of his relationship with Gil Manzano, since he is a referee with projection, called to direct “important games in the coming seasons.”
The existence of these reports could serve a judge as proof that Barça had the intention of influencing the competition, which could already constitute a crime. The Prosecutor’s Office, however, goes further than the Tax Agency and in its complaint indicates that, “through the presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, Barça reached and maintained a strictly confidential verbal agreement”, with the vice president of the collective arbitration, so that “in exchange for money, he would carry out actions tending to favor Barcelona in the decision-making of the referees in the matches that the club played and thus in the results of the competitions.” “It meant a real remuneration not provided for in the club’s statutes or approved by the General Assembly. In short, these perceptions did not have any legal or statutory support, “says the complaint.