The Tax Agency warned the Prosecutor’s Office in April 2022 that it had not been able to prove that the payments from FC Barcelona to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) José María Enríquez Negreira had influenced the designation of collegiates or altered the results of the matches.
According to the report that includes the summary of the case of the Negreira case, to which EFE has had, the prosecutor maintains that the former referee invoiced Barça more than 7.5 million euros without responding “to an accredited economic activity”, although he points out that “there is no evidence whatsoever that it could influence the results.”
The Treasury specifies that “this lack of accreditation and explanation” could be “an indication” that the invoices could be concealing illegal services such as trading with confidential information from the arbitration committee, influencing arbitration appointments or participating in the alteration of results. However , emphasizes that these behaviors “have not been proven in the inspection procedure”, nor is there evidence, according to the Tax Agency, of payments to any arbitrator.
The Treasury reached these conclusions, despite the fact that, in its complaint, the Prosecutor’s Office maintains that, through the presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, the Barça club “reached and maintained” a “strictly confidential verbal agreement” with the then vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees so that “in exchange for money” it could carry out “actions tending to favor FC Barcelona in the decision-making of the referees in the matches it played” and in the “results of the competitions”.
In its report, the Tax Agency also accredits all cash outflows between 2016 and 2019 from the current account of DASNIL 95, one of the companies with which José María Enríquez Negreira billed Barcelona.
In that period, 557,871.52 euros were withdrawn in cash from the 1.6 million euros that DASNIL 95 billed between 2016 and 2018, the period investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office. The Treasury and the National Police also state in the report that these cash withdrawals may be linked to payments to third parties.
The Court of Instruction number 1 of the Catalan capital admitted to process the complaint of the Prosecutor’s Office against FC Barcelona and José María Enríquez Negreira for the millionaire payments of the Barcelona entity to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees on March 15.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, these payments made by the Catalan club between 2001 and 2018, amounting to 7.5 million euros, could constitute a continuing crime of corruption between individuals in the sports field, a continuing crime of unfair administration and a continued crime of falsifying a commercial document.
In addition to FC Barcelona and Enríquez Negreira, the former presidents of the Catalan club Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former general director of the entity Óscar Grau and the former director of Professional Sports Albert Soler appear as denounced.
