The Civil Guard analyzes whether Negreira channeled the funds he received from Barcelona to third parties. In a letter to which La Vanguardia has had access, Benemérita requests the investigating judge 1 of Barcelona Joaquín Aguirre to claim from eight banking entities all the movements made from 2001 to 2018 of the 72 accounts managed by José María Enríquez Negreria, his son, his partner and their companies to “clarify the final destination of the funds” they received from Fútbol Club Barcelona.
The document indicates that from the tax information it is clear that in numerous bank accounts, in addition to the Negreiras, “other natural and legal persons arrived or controlled” by them participate and they consider that “based on their” investigative experience, “not in a few Occasionally, this interposition of natural and legal persons is used to use them in the process of concealing funds and assets from unjustified sources. Therefore, they highlight that “it cannot be ruled out that José María Enríquez Negreira had channeled at least partially part of the funds obtained through other people in their environment taking into account the significant withdrawals of funds from their bank accounts and those of their commercial companies,” says the Civil Guard.
One of the suspicions that would account for this operation to hide and divert funds is the relationship between Negreira’s son and the deceased former director of the club, Josep Contreras. Javier Enríquez invoiced Contreras companies for services he provided to Barça. And those Contreras entities then “rebilled” the club with a 33% increase. For this reason, the Civil Guard also requests to “determine exactly which funds from Barça were conveyed through the entities of Javier Enríquez and Josep Contreras.
The big question in the Negreira case is to determine whether Barça paid the vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees to influence refereeing decisions or the appointment of referees, rewarding those who benefited Barça or reprimanding those who harmed it, or whether The payments were intended to transfer the club’s money to other people through Negreira. Or if it was simply paid in exchange for arbitration advice and reports, as the club maintains. The Civil Guard is currently continuing to investigate on both fronts and in the same letter it emphasizes that from the investigation carried out so far the influence of Negreira is “palpable” “at least in the evaluations for arbitration promotions and relegations and/or in the appointment as international arbitrators of the members of the arbitration group.
