The former director of FC Barcelona Albert Soler He declared before the Prosecutor’s Office that the arbitration reports of the Negreiras were “to improve the performance” of FC Barcelona and that they were then thrown “in the trash”. LD exclusively revealed the reports that the former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), José Maria Enriquez Negreiraprepared for him FC Barcelona for which he charged a total of €7.3 million of course advice to Barça between 2001 and 2018. These reports of just 2 or 3 pages were full of misspellings and obviousness.
Soler was Secretary of State for Sport and President of the Higher Sports Council (CSD) during the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. He was an official in the city council of the Catalan capital and directed several sports areas of the Barcelona City Council, as well as being a councilor for the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC). In June 2014, Soler resigned from his deputy certificate to join FC Barcelona as Director of Institutional Sports Relations. In May 2021, he was appointed general director of the CSD with the Government of Pedro Sanchez until January 2023.
Alberto Soler’s complete statement before the Police Unit attached to the Prosecutor’s Office took place on September 21, 2022 and is included in its entirety in the summary of the Negreira case, to which he has had access digital freedom.
According to Soler, “He was never part of the board of directors, he was always hired personnel. Each section had a sports budget for transfers and a Technical Secretary who was in charge of making the squads. The functions of the declarant was to balance between the budget that was had and the pretensions of the coach would match.
Asked about who was in charge of contracting services for the sections, Soler said that “what refers to pure services (transport, security, that is, general services) they were contracted directly from the general services of the Club. All that were contracts outside the signings of players depended on the general services. When any Section needed to contract a service, the declarant addressed the CEO, Oscar Grau”.
Regarding the existing relationship between the FCB and José María Enríquez Negreira through the companies NILSAD SCP and DASNIL SL, he pointed out that “He had no relationship with Enríquez Negreira, with whom he did have a relationship it was with Javier Enríquez. That this person provided him with an analysis of the referee assigned by the College of Referees to whistle the first team and Barcelona B every week. Javier Enríquez took or sent the papers to the declarant, consisting of a report where he analyzed the referee’s style to whistle time, as well as a CD containing images of plays in which the corresponding referee had intervened in other matches”.
Asked to say if this was exclusively the job, he said “yes, the only relationship, since this service was already being done when he held the position. This service was already being carried out for a long time. He is unaware of both the contract and the price of these services.”
Regarding the purpose of said works, he affirmed that “It was one more analysis to improve the team’s performance. Just as the opposing team was analyzed, the way of arbitrating the referee who was going to whistle the game was analyzed”.
Regarding who was in charge of approving the payment of the invoices for these services, Soler pointed out “that he supposes that from administration but he does not know it. The CFO, thinks it was Pancho Schroeder“.
Asked about who notified that the services had been provided correctly so that payment could be made, he pointed out that “normally it was Oscar Grau (former manager of Barça) who asked the declarant if the services were being performed correctly. In any case, nothing was communicated unless there was some anomaly, if everything was correct it was not necessary to communicate anything, it deduced that everything was fine”.
Subsequently, he was asked about how, who and where the works presented by the Negreira companies were stored. Soler affirmed that he “sent the work to the sports department of the first and second teams, not knowing who was in charge of receiving it and where it was kept from, he supposes that once used that information and played the match the report and the CD would be thrown in the trash as it believes that there was no file for this documentation“.
When asked if in 2018 Óscar Grau asked him about these services and what they consisted of, he pointed out that “he does not remember, that the CEO knew what these jobs consisted of. Also, on that date he is no longer in charge of soccer, he commissioned by Óscar Grau himself”. He later pointed out that Óscar Grau “told him that they were leaving these services but he doesn’t remember telling him the reason. It is true that at that time the Club was having an economic crisis”.
