The revelations continue to occur in Spain regarding the investigation of a company of a former referee of the Football Federation for some payments allegedly made by Barcelona.
New information from the newspaper El Mundo shook Barcelona again on the night from Thursday to Friday, just after the 2-2 draw recorded by Xavi Hernández’s players against Manchester United in the Europa League.
According to the Spanish newspaper, Barcelona paid more than 6 million euros (6.3 million dollars) since 2001 to José María Enríquez Negreira, former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees between 1994 and 2018, to advise the club on arbitration issues.
The amount is much higher than 1.4 million euros (1.489 million dollars) announced so far by the Spanish media, which would have been paid between 2016 and 2018.
When the CTA was restructured in 2018 with the arrival of a new directive to the Spanish Federation and Negreira was dismissed from his position, Barcelona finalized the payments, according to the former Barça president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, to reduce expenses.
Negreira, according to El Mundo, reacted by sending a fax to the Catalan clubn on February 5, 2019 to threaten him with revealing “a scandal”.
The digital newspaper El Confidencial published this Friday that two other companies are being investigated within the framework of this case: Soccercam SL, belonging to Negreira’s son, and Tresep 2014 SL, to Josep Contreras Arjona, a former manager of Barça, whose company would have been used to channel payments to the former referee.
– ‘If I see that we win with cheats…’ –
“If I see that we win with cheats, I’m going home,” Xavi reacted on Thursday, in a press conference after the match against United.
It all started on Wednesday when Cadena Ser radio revealed that the Barcelona prosecutor’s office had been investigating the company of a former referee who would have received 1.4 million euros between 2016 and 2018 from Barcelona, for an alleged crime of corruption between individuals.
According to the station, the investigation began after detecting tax irregularities by the company Dasnil 95, owned by Enríquez Negreira.
The ex-referee denied any favorable treatment to the Barça club. His role, according to what he told reporters, It would have been limited to advising verbally on issues such as the behavior of the players towards the referees.
As soon as the information was released, Barcelona issued a statement in which, without directly naming Dasnil 95explained that he had a contract in the past with an “external provider” from whom he received, among others, “technical reports related to professional arbitration”, which is “a common practice in professional football clubs”.
At the moment, As reported in the note, this task falls to “a professional in the soccer field.”
– Federation and League waiting –
According to Bartomeu, president of Barça between 2014 and 2020, he decided to get rid of the services of this company to save expenses in 2018, the year in which the CTA was restructured and Negreira left it.
On Thursday, the integrity department of the Spanish Football Federation announced that it had started “a request for information reserved for both those responsible for the CTA and FC Barcelona” to adopt possible measures “when sufficient information is available”.
LaLiga, which runs professional football in Spain, reacted through the mouth of its president, Javier Tebas: “we have to clarify from the outset, we have already studied it, that it is not possible that there are sports disciplinary sanctions” against Barça.
Thebes explained that the events occurred in 2018 and previous years, for which reason “from 18 to 23 five years have passed and this type of sanctions prescribes three years from the time the events occurred.”
Instead, LaLiga will appear as a private prosecution if there is a complaint from the prosecution, Tebas assured.
