more trouble for him FC Barcelona. The prosecution has decided to formalize its complaint against the Catalan club for the payments that the Barcelona entity made to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
The initiative of the Public Ministry points directly to the former president of Barça, Josep Maria Bartomeu and other members of its board of directors. The complaint refers to payments for a value of 1.4 million euros that would have been made between 2016 and 2018 from the Barcelona entity to the former collegiate of First division and that since 1994 became number two in the CTA.
The Public Ministry accuses the former member of the CTA and Bartomeu of a continuous crime of corruption between individuals in the sports field. In addition, they are also accused of other important crimes of unfair administration and false commercial documents.
[Los ordenadores de Bartomeu, claves en el ‘caso Negreira’, están en poder de los Mossos]
Within this complaint made by the Prosecutor’s Office against the Catalan team, several members of the board of directors who were part of the time when Bartomeu was the top leader of the Barcelona entity are also indicated. Among these names are Oscar Grauformer executive director of Barça, and Albert Solerancient professional sports director. Finally, FC Barcelona also appears among those denounced as a legal entity.
In the complaint presented by the Prosecutor’s Office, Josep Maria Bartomeu is not the only president of FC Barcelona who has been pointed out, since the figure of Sandro Rosellwho held the position of top manager of the club just before Bartomeu himself.
Bartomeu and Rosell, at the gates of the National Court
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According to the Prosecutor’s Office, FC Barcelona, as a club, maintained relations with José María Enríquez Negreira while he was vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees thanks to the intervention of both Bartomeu and Rosell. These verbal agreements, defined as “confidential”, were produced in exchange for money with the tendency of giving the Barça team an arbitration balance in their favor in matches played in national competitions.
Negreira’s functions
The Technical Committee of Referees was, and is, the entity in charge of establishing the arbitration appointments for matches of both La Liga and the Copa del Rey or the Spanish Super Cup, competitions in which FC Barcelona sought favorable treatment for in accordance with what was stated by the Prosecutor’s Office in its complaint.
[Albert Soler conspiró con Javier Tebas para echar a Rubiales y quedarse como presidente de la RFEF]
Enríquez Negreira, within his functions as number two of the arbitrators under the presidency of Sanchez Arminio in the CTA and Angel Maria Villar in the RFEF, participated in the evaluations of the referees after each performance. These, in turn, also marked the possibility of promotion and relegation between the First and Second Division within the arbitration group, in addition to the candidacy to appoint some referees as international referees.
The Prosecutor’s Office focuses its complaint on the payments that FC Barcelona would have made to Enríquez Negreira during the years 2016, 2017 and 2018, seasons in which the Catalan club paid close to a million and a half euros to the former referee. However, there is evidence that these fraudulent movements of money would have occurred since the early 2000s. Negreira was a professional arbitrator from 1975 to 1992 and later vice president of the CTA from 1993 to 2018.
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