Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, assured that this body will also be presented as a private prosecution in the Negreira case and explained that “Spanish football needs clarity”, after stressing that “the reputation of this competition is above and the club does not matter to be”.
Thebes announced the performance of LaLiga after confirming that the Prosecutor’s Office will file a complaint against the former president of Barcelona Josep Maria Bartomeu and against the club itself, for the millionaire payments to the former arbitration leader, and after the information published this Wednesday by the newspaper El Mundo about a message that José María Enríquez Negreira sent to Barça, in which he claimed to be able to “help them with the VAR”.
“Very sad, you have to investigate. You have to know if there was influence or not. Because the influence can be direct or indirect. But it is susceptible to investigate. Only the intention of trying to buy a game or vary the result. Simply acting thinking that you could changing the intention of the referees, even a designation can be a crime,” he explained.
Thebes revealed that LaLiga reported the matter to UEFA 48 hours after it was made public. “As we could not intervene because it had prescribed, we wrote to UEFA, which other institutions did not do,” he said after recalling that UEFA’s statutes provide that when national institutions cannot intervene they can do so at an international level.
The president of LaLiga insisted that he wants this issue to be clarified and that “there is no campaign to discredit Barcelona” and also denied that he has an interest in the club becoming a Public Limited Company. “In the Spanish LaLiga we are the ones who fight against the state clubs. We don’t have a mania for Barça, Laporta and his managers know it,” he sentenced.
He also maintained that “the dispute with the Premier comes from behind, with the issue of Financial FairPlay”, in response to the statements by the president of the Spanish Football Federation (REF), Luis Rubiales, in which he considered “chance” that this news came out when the Spanish league was being compared with the English one.
The newspaper El Mundo published in its latest edition that Enríquez Negreira sent Barcelona a message when he no longer collaborated with the club in 2020, in which he offered the club to help him with the VAR.
“I can help you with the VAR, it would have been better with me. If you are interested, contact us,” says the newspaper that Negreira wrote to try to maintain the relationship he had with the club and that had reported him 6.6 million euros.
The Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office will denounce Barcelona as a legal person, Enríquez Negreira, the former president of the club, Josep María Bartomeu and the former directors Albert Soler and Óscar Grau for the crimes of corruption in business and unfair administration, after payments made between 2001 and 2018 for alleged arbitration advice.