Joan Laporta refuses refereeing favors at Fútbol Club Barcelona. During his testimony as a witness before the judge of the Negreira affairthe current president of Barça maintained this Friday that the team was an “example in the world”, and that “the referees were not at all … “They favored us.” The instructor is investigating Barça’s payments to Spain’s former number two referee, José María Enríquez Negreira, over 18 years. The thesis of the prosecution, which formalized the complaint against the club in February 2023, is that the payments, which would exceed 8 million euros, were aimed precisely at these advantages on the part of the referees.
Asked about the reports, Laporta told the instructor that he has already contributed 629 to the causeand it cannot bring more because They were destroyed “every five to six years”. Concerning their origin, the president of the club indicated that during his first mandate (2003-2010) “he inherited” the payments to Negreira “from an earlier era”and that from the club’s sports area they told him that they were “worth it” for their information on referees and “scooting”. As judicial sources explain, a lawyer also questioned him about the payment invoices to Enríquez Negreira and he explained that as president he is not aware of each payment, but is informed in a “generic” way. And what’s more, he recalled, this is information dating from two decades ago.
According to the Barça president, the payments to former vice-president of the Technical Commission of Referees (CTA) “did not go through the board of directors.” And regarding his objective, if this is the suspicion of the Prosecutor’s Office, to obtain advantages from the referees, he stressed that he never felt that the referees favored the club and that this accusation had “no meaning”.
Also this morning, two former Barça coaches testified as witnesses before the Barcelona Court of Instruction 1: Ernesto Valverde and Luis Enrique. The first, as he already did before the Civil Guard, argued on the reports of Negreira: “I haven’t seen them, I don’t know if they exist and I don’t care“. For his part, the Asturian, in the same sense, also denied having seen them and indicated that he “had no knowledge” of their existence or not.
Javier Enriquez
It should be recalled that last September, one of the defendants in this case, Negreira’s son, Javier Enriquezassured the judge that he had prepared advisory reports for the club, but indicated that he had charged them around 250 euros; far from the astronomical figures that the ancestor of Barça received, between 2001 and 2018. The payments stopped, precisely, when Negreira ceased to be vice-president of the CTA.
Laporta was one of the Barca presidents under investigation in the case, but the Barcelona court ultimately overturned his accusation by ruling out alleged corruption in the Negreira case. Yes, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu are, who during their statement, also three months ago, emphasized that Barça won thanks to Messi and not by paying the former vice-president of the CTA. Furthermore, just like Laporta today, the two former Barça leaders indicated that they had inherited the hiring of Negreira from previous managers, and that all big teams have or should have advice so that coaches have information on how referees whistle and can thus prepare for matches.
It will be in February that new declarations will be made. On the one hand, that of the representative of Barça – accused as a legal person – Elena Font, and as a witness, another of its former leaders. Jeanne Gaspart. It is precisely in the same judgment that the judge, Alejandra Gil, asked the club to provide the contracts with the former head of arbitration.
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