The Negreira case has become a priority investigation for the State Attorney General’s Office. It has decreed that it is Anticorruption, in Madrid, and not the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office that leads the investigation. The argument is that it is a case of great importance and that specialized prosecutors should direct it.
The State Attorney General’s Office was in charge of outlining and putting the final touches on the complaint that the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office ended up presenting last Friday and accusing Sandro Rosell, Josep Maria Bartomeu, two former executives and the club, as a legal entity, of pay Negreira in exchange for arbitration favors. In the complaint, he requests that a total of ten people be summoned as witnesses, as La Vanguardia has learned. It is surprising that no arbitrator has been cited despite the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office is clear that Negreira influenced them.
Among the witnesses requested by the Prosecutor’s Office are Joan Laporta and Joan Gaspart. It is intended that they give explanations about the recurring payments that they made to the vice president of the arbitrators since 2001. As they will have to appear as witnesses, they will be obliged to tell the truth. The former Barça coaches, Luis Enrique and Ernesto Valverde, also appear on the list, as the newspaper El País advanced. The objective is to clarify if they saw the videos that Negreira’s company supposedly made and then that of his son analyzing the profile of the referees. Valverde, in a recent press conference, specified that he never looked at them and “didn’t even know they existed.”
The Prosecutor’s list also includes Carles Tusquets, who was the president of the Management Board that took control of the club after the resignation of Bartomeu and his board. The prosecutor summons him to testify because of his status as former president of the economic commission. The objective is that she can clarify the reason for the payments to Negreira. Sources close to the case have explained that the payments to the ex-referee escaped the control mechanisms of the club and that they were masked with the payroll of players and salaries of other heads of the sports department. Payments were validated by those responsible for the sports area.
Precisely one of those responsible for the sports area was Pep Segura, whom the Prosecutor’s Office also proposes to be summoned to testify. He was the club’s general manager since 2017 and technical secretary since 2015. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, both the videos and the Negreira invoices must have passed through his hands. In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office also requests the appearance of Pere Lluís Mellado, current director of the legal area of ??FC Barcelona.
Negreira’s son, Javier Enríquez Romero, must also appear as a witness. The inclusion of him in the list of witnesses and not of the defendants is surprising. His company began to be a supplier to FC Barcelona in 2016, replacing his father’s. The payments he received were made through a company belonging to the former Barça director, Josep Contreras, who died in December. Yesterday El Confidencial published that they were channeled through six companies. However, in the complaint by referee Xavier Estrada, Negreira’s son does appear as a defendant, so the judge must decide in what condition he appears.
The investigating judge 1 of Barcelona will shortly accept the complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office and will summon those investigated to testify first and then the witnesses. The court parade could start in a month. He will also have to decide if he accepts Real Madrid as a private accusation. Before, the white club will have to argue in what it has felt harmed.
