The Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office has presented this Friday in the Investigating Court number 1 of Barcelona the complaint for the ‘Negreira case’ of a alleged continued crime of corruption of individuals and unfair administration and has included the former president of Barça Sandro Rosell in it. In addition, the added crime of falsehood. The prosecution’s action is directed against FC Barcelona as a legal person, the former referee José María Enríquez Negreira, the former president of Barça, Josep Maria Bartomeu, and the former executives of the club Oscar Grau and Albert Soler.
Sandro Rosell has been included in the complaint, which will instruct the Court of Instruction number 1 of Barcelona, considering that the payments made to Negreira by Barça during his tenure have not expired. Therefore, the radius of the investigation has been expanded, according to the sources consulted by this newspaper. Other former presidents, such as John Gaspart and Joan Laporta, will testify, in principle, as witnesses.
The complaint states that through Rosell and Bartomeu, Barça reached and maintained a “strictly confidential” verbal agreement with the defendant Negreira, so that, in his capacity as vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) and “in exchange for money”, carry out actions tending to favor the club in the decision-making of the referees in the matches and “so in the results of the competitions”. It specifies that this committee was the one who appointed the referees for each match of the official Spanish competitions at the state and professional level and that this body is also in charge of the evaluations -in which the defendant participated- for the promotions and demotions of the category of the arbitrators, as well as the proposal of candidates for international arbitrators.
false invoices
For this work, Negreira, through his companies, issued invoices that were presented to FC Barcelona for payment, “without them responding to any provision or real advisory services”, maintains the prosecution. The public prosecution considers that it has not been proven that the son of the former arbitration leader participated in this plot. The complaint stresses that the invoices presented by Negreira’s firm in an inspection by the Tax Agency “lost the presumption of validity”, despite proving effective payment, when Treasury officials, after reviewing them, concluded that they were fictitious.
The payments made by Barça to Negreira From 2001 to 2018, during his vice-presidency at the CTA, they exceeded 7.3 million euros according to the history of invoiced amounts. “This represented a real remuneration not provided for in the club’s statutes or approved by the general assembly, for which reason it lacked a title to justify it. In short, said perceptions had no legal or statutory support,” details the prosecution. However, the prosecution limits the newspaper that must be investigated: from 2014 to 2018, when the board of directors chaired by Bartomeu stopped paying.
Millions of euros
The complaint details that in this period, FC Barcelona disbursed a total of 2.9 million euros to the former manager’s companies arbitral. The funds were withdrawn “mostly” by bearer checks by people trusted by Negreira, who were given cash, “the final destination of the withdrawals being unknown.” The former leader was relieved of the vice presidency of the CTA in May 2018, which is why Barça put an end to all payments. Subsequently, in February 2019, by means of a burofax sent to the president’s office of the Barça club, the former arbitration leader criticized the termination of the relationship, demanding that he reach a “fair solution” for both parties and warning him of the consequences of not doing so.
The facts, according to the accusation, constitute a crime of corruption between individuals in the sports field, for which the prosecution accuses Negreira, Rosell, Bartomeu, Grau, Soler and FC Barcelona, as a legal person. The crime of unfair administration is also attributed to the former president and former directors of the club. The alleged falsehood is only attributed to Negreira, Grau, Soler and Bartomeu.
