March 23, 2023, 9:24 AM
March 23, 2023, 9:24 AM
UEFA announced on Thursday the opening of an investigation in relation to a “possible violation of the legal framework” of the instance by FC Barcelona in the arbitration scandal in which the Catalan club is involved.
A court in Barcelona has been investigating the Catalan club and some of its leaders since March 10 for “corruption between individuals in the sports field”, “unfair administration” and “falsification of a commercial document” in the case of suspicious payments to José María Enríquez Negreira, who was a senior official in Spanish arbitration, also denounced.
The Spanish justice admitted the complaints for processing of the Barcelona prosecutor’s office for the so-called ‘Negreira case’, in which alleged payments from Barcelona to companies of a former arbitration officer are being investigated.
The trial court number 1 of Barcelona will investigate the complaints filed against Barcelona and former leaders of the club, including former presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, according to a court order made public this Wednesday.
The complaint is also directed against José María Enríquez Negreira, former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) and his company Dasnil 95, which would have collected millions in payments for alleged arbitration reports.
This is the next step in the investigation of the case after the Barcelona Provincial Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint for crimes of “corruption between individuals in the sports field”, “unfair administration” and “false commercial document”.
The judge has united the complaints presented by the public ministry and the arbitrator Xavier Estrada Fernández for this case against Negreira.
According to the prosecution’s complaint, Negreira, who was vice president of the CTA between 1994 and 2018, received more than 7.3 million euros from Barcelona through its companies (7.7 million dollars) between 2001 and 2018.
Barça ceased its payments in 2018, according to the prosecution, due to the departure of Negreira from the CTA when the organization was remodeled with the arrival of Luis Rubiales to the presidency of the Spanish Federation (RFEF).
