Barcelona “never took any action that had the ultimate goal or intention of altering the competition to gain some kind of sporting advantage,” club president Joan Laporta said on Monday.
With the statement, the manager dismissed suspicions generated after the court opened an investigation into Barça’s payments to a former referee. He attributed the transfer to a “smear campaign” against the club.
A court in Barcelona is investigating a complaint by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which indicates, among others, the Catalan club and the club’s former directors, including former presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, as well as José María Enríquez Negreira, former vice-president President of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA).
The prosecutor accuses the defendants of the crime of “corruption between private individuals in the sporting arena”, as well as attributing the crime of “unfair administration” to the former managers of Barcelona, who are also accused, together with Negreira, of “falsification in a commercial act”.
📍 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋: go for it! #GetafeBarça pic.twitter.com/MdHhD430GQ
— FC Barcelona (@fcbarcelona_br) April 16, 2023
According to the deputy’s complaint, Negreira, who was vice president of the CTA between 1994 and 2018, received more than 7.3 million euros ($7.7 million) from Barcelona through his companies between 2001 and 2018. 2018 for Referee Reports. Barça stopped payments in 2018, according to the prosecutor, after Negreira left the CTA.
For the deputy, Barcelona, through Rosell and Bartomeu, “has reached and maintained a strictly confidential verbal agreement” with Negreira “so that, in his capacity as vice-president of the CTA and in exchange for payments, he performs actions with a tendency to favor the FCB in the decision-making process of the referees in the matches played by the club, and therefore in the results of the competitions”.
Laporta recalled that the Spanish Revenue Agency – whose inspections Negreira ended up motivating the complaint – sent a letter to the Attorney General in which it states that “it has not been able to demonstrate that the payments made to Negreira’s companies may have influenced the referees or the result of any match”. .
“They couldn’t prove it because it wasn’t possible,” added the Barca president at a press conference on the case. Laporta said the services for which the club has made payments are documented.
“Some services were provided, they were documented, there were invoices, payments that are in the books. There was no crime of corruption,” insisted the Barca president.
Source: Terra
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