The president of the Professional Soccer League, Javier Tebas, sent documentation to the court that may be related to the Negreira case. This is a handwritten note by the former director of FC Barcelona, ??Josep Contreras, which has been incorporated into the judicial summary, in which people who could be seen splashed by the scandal appear. Contreras, who died last December, was being investigated in the Soule case, which investigates an alleged shipment of funds from the Spanish Football Federation during the time presided over by Ángel María Villar. In 2017, Contreras’s home was searched and an envelope containing a disturbing note was seized in a safe. “Top Secret. Clause: only possible to open it in the event of the world’s greatest misfortune for us. PS: We would gladly give it up to avoid it.” Inside the envelope, a note was found that seems to draw a circuit of leaders of Barça and the Spanish Federation related to some type of payment supposedly with black money. At one end of the note you can read: “black money check”.
Thebes clarifies in his letter that he wants to flee from “a speculative spirit” but considers that there are names and surnames in the handwritten note that may coincide with certain former managers of FC Barcelona and the Federation. The names that appear in Contreras’ note are: Román (supposedly Gómez Ponti, former head of the club’s legal services); Rosell, (supposedly Sandro Rosell), Josep María (presumably Bartomeu) as well as Julio Molinaro, who was Arjona’s lawyer and who was the administrator of the company that billed Barça.
In the judicial summary, the name of Contreras appears as the intermediary between Barça and Negreira’s son. Contreras was a manager with Josep Lluís Núñez, Joan Gaspart and Josep María Bartomeu; vice president of the Catalan Football Federation and close friend of the former president of the Federation, Ángel María Villar. Javier Enríquez since 2016 was in charge of preparing analysis videos of the referees. As he himself acknowledged before the Tax Agency, Barça did not hire him directly but billed Contreras’s company and then it billed Barça. This avoided associating the Negreira surname with the club, something that seems strange since his father continued to collect directly from Barça through his company. The Treasury showed that only through the intermediation Contreras pocketed 150,000 euros, 33% of what he paid to the son of the former referee. In addition, despite the professionalism that Negreira’s son intends to exhibit, he acknowledged that he delivered the videos and reports by hand to Contreras in cafeterias where the manager would meet him. Either in Gavà, where Contreras lived, or in various hotels.
“We would meet first thing in the morning two or three days in advance,” Javier Enríquez said in his statement to the National Police. “Contreras never used WhatsApp or email. Contacts were made by phone. For those jobs in which Enríquez invested between 10 and 20 hours a month, he earned between 6,000 and 7,000 euros each month through the Contreras company. The reports were also confidential. “The only people who knew about the club were the President, Albert Soler and Gerard López, then coach of Barça B,” he said. Bartomeu’s Board decided to break with the Negreiras in 2018 to cut expenses, and coinciding with the same month that he left office as vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees.
