“The Prosecutor’s Office does not provide any proof of purchase of arbitrators”

The prosecution filed a complaint this Friday with Barcelona’s Investigating Court number 1 for which it accuses former presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, former executives Óscar Grau and Albert Soler, Enríquez Negreira and FC Barcelona as a legal person of various crimes. They are accused of paying money to Enríquez Negreira so that he the referees favored Barcelona which is a crime of sports corruption and they are also accused of unfair administration and false commercial documents.

However, once this complaint, to which this newspaper has had access, has been analyzed by various jurists, The Prosecutor’s Office does not provide evidence about any of these crimes. The most obvious is to pay the referees to favor Barcelona. The complaint says the following:

The accusation of the former presidents

“Through Presidents Rosell and Bartomeu, the FCB reached and maintained a strictly confidential verbal agreement with the accused Enríquez Negreira, so that, in his capacity as Vice President of the CTA and in exchange for money, carry out actions tending to favor the FCB in the decision-making of the referees in the matches played by the Club, and thus in the results of the competitions; referees whose designation for each match of the official Spanish competitions at the state and professional level are carried out within the CTA, the body in charge, in addition, of the evaluations -in which the defendant participated- for promotions and demotions of referees, as well as the proposal of candidates for international referees”.

There is no evidence in the complaint

However, no evidence is provided to support this accusation. “In all the complaint there is no proof or indication that the referees have been bought. As of today they are conjectures. But without evidence, the defendants cannot be sentenced for this chapter,” the lawyer told MARCA Philip Left. Other lawyers understand that as long as there is no testimony or documentary evidence, the purchase accusation “does not stand.”

Missing documentation

Where there is evidence of crime is in the accusations for unfair administration and for falsification of a commercial document. In the first, it seems that it is evident that an exorbitant price was paid for a series of services that could not be accredited. “The companies of Enríquez Negreira issued invoices that were presented to the FCB for collection without them responding to any provision or real technical advisory services.” He says the complaint adds that when Barcelona was asked to hand over the documents, the response was that “required documentation not found”.

Invoices

Regarding the crime of falsifying a commercial document, the complaint makes it clear that there were invoices and that they were collected, but without proving their purpose. “Said invoices did not correspond to services rendered by the aforementioned companies due to the lack of proof that would prove the reality of the activity carried out by those.