The president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta, said this as a testimony of the Negreira affair, the legal case that investigates different presidents and directors of the Azulgrana club for paying more than seven million euros to José María Enríquez Negreira, who was vice-president of the Technical Arbitration Commission of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF). As successors of his first term, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, explained that the payments for these reports were inherited from the previous stage and that, in any case, the first team Azulgrana did not benefit in any way from the arbitrations during the time he presided over the club. Judicial sources indicated that, during his one-hour statement, he realized the quality of the first team, which he considered “an example in the world”, so there is no shortage of time, in conclusion.
The weight of his statement coincided with the explanation that was proposed in a press release in 2023, after which the investigation carried out by the Juzgado de Instrucción 1 de Barcelona was revealed, which with the statements of this upcoming date could close the investigation. Laporta admitted that during his mandate, 600 reports were received (which were destroyed every five or six years) which were then entrusted to Negreira and his son, Javier Enríquez, on the recommendation of the sports management, who approved the content: a description of the schoolboys who had to referee at Barça in the aftermath of the parties and their way of acting on the field.
Laporta stressed that the reports were a legacy of previous directives and that he never knew the number of referees in his family, if he always had good references from them and the work they carried out. Asimism, it was said that the low amount of payment to its perpetrators was unnecessary since the charge should pass through the club’s board of directors. But it was found that the first team never benefited from anyone’s refereeing, however, according to the sources present during their statement, the first team did not need it because it was a world reference.
Joan Laporta entered the courtroom of the Ciutat de la Justícia de L’Hospitalet de Llobregat where he made a statement without a lawyer and in the quality of his testimony, after which the investigating judge decided to waive the condition of individual investigation because the payments he had made during his term as president were already prescribed. His successors in this position, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, remain accused of criminal knowledge for paying more than seven million euros while he was vice-president of the Technical Arbitration Committee (CTA) and his wife for alleged consulting services. The statute of limitations for the corruption offense could reach 10 years ago, as Laporta finished his first term at Barcelona, while the payments started during the Joan Gaspart era, in 2010, will continue.
Before Laporta declared Ernesto Valverde, he joined Barca’s first team between 2017 and 2020 (they paid for Bartomeu’s tenure in 2018). The current coach of Athletic Bilbao assured that these reports are usual and that his current club also prepares them, but since his time at Barcelona he does not assume that they exist and that in fact he gives them the same, since he has never used them as a coach. Luis Enrique, who, as Valverde said about the quality of the test via video conference, also refused to know the information about the referees.
Former presidents Rosell and Bartomeu declared themselves accountable last September, when they ruled out that they had been paid number of Referees of the time influenced Barcelona’s successes both in the Spanish League and in international competitions. The leaders highlighted the presence of Argentine footballer Leo Messi and other first team players as the only argument for the successes achieved during their mandates, between 2010 and 2014 for the first and between 2014 and 2020 for the second. In any case, his statements focused on the reports made by Javier Enríquez, Negreira’s son, but not on the reason for the payments made to his parish priest. In Laporta’s statement this month, there was no distinction between payments to one or the other.
This statement came from Laporta, as well as the team’s coaches between 2014 and 2020, a few weeks after Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez toughened his speech against Barcelona during the club’s general assembly. “It is not normal that FC Barcelona has paid at least millions of euros to the vice-president of referees for 17 years,” he said, drawing some statistics on the expulsions in which Madrid found itself in a bad position and, in turn, Barcelona benefited with a lot of difference.
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