When FC Barcelona hired the services of José María Enríquez Negreira, then vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees, he charged him with five tasks: request that the Competition Committee, responsible for disciplinary sanctions against players, not be composed entirely by Madrid judges; that the club has an interlocutor with the RFEF; for Negreira to recommend which yellow cards or expulsions could be appealed after a match, and to inform or warn of any institutional visit by the RFEF or the CTA. Finally, Negreira also had to keep the club informed of possible interests or disagreements between the RFEF and LaLiga. To fulfill these five missions, declared to the Treasury by Negreira himself in October 2021, the ex-collegiate invoiced 7.5 million euros between 2001 and 2018.
In addition, in a document that the police found at the home of the former manager of FC Barcelona, ??José Contreras, it was specified that Negreira’s son, Javier Enríquez, also prepared pre-match reports and an analysis of the performance of the players after the match matches of the Barcelona first team, the subsidiary and also of Real Madrid, referred to in the document as “el rival RM”. All arbitration reports had to be provided to Barça “anonymously”, and both the billing and the reports “had to be hand-delivered to Mr. Contreras or whoever is determined”.
The exchange of documents took place either at Contreras’ home or in cafes such as those at the Princesa Sofia hotel or the Majestic. Although the reports date back to 2012, the extensive documentation of the summary includes examples from 2016 to 2018, the period under fiscal investigation. The pre-match reports were about 10 pages long, with photos of the main referee and his assistants and an extensive dossier with personal and professional explanations. The post-match documents consisted of tables with the minutes of the actions, the arbitration decisions and whether, in the eyes of Enríquez son, they were correct or not.
The referee analyzes that consist of the first team in the summary are about the Copa del Rey matches of the 2016-2017 academic year. Also about the matches he played in the Champions League: the six group stage games against Celtic from Glasgow, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Manchester City, the round of 16 against PSG and the quarter-final against Juventus, in which the Blaugrana were eliminated. In the match in which Barça beat PSG at the Camp Nou, it is noted that there were three refereeing errors by referee Deniz Aytekin in favor of the Blaugrana.
The first was “Mascherano’s kick on Di María in an obvious scoring opportunity in the Barcelona area in the 84th minute, which was not sanctioned”. The report describes that the correct decision would have been to “whistle a penalty against Barcelona and send off the Argentine defender”. Regarding the penalty awarded to Luis Suárez in the 89th minute, which made the score 5-1, the analysis states that the player “takes advantage of a slight contact on the chest to let himself fall” and assures that the correct decision would have state not to indicate penalty. The report still touches on a third move that, according to Negreira, benefited Barça: the penalty awarded to Neymar in the 47th minute and which made it 3-0 “was rigorous”.
The summary also reflects the referees’ income in an account that Javier Enríquez shares with his wife for his services as a coach. They include cases such as that of Jaime Latre, current VAR referee, who between 2016 and 2017 paid 1,400 euros, or that of Alberola Rojas, who paid 7,400 euros between 2018 and 2019. Another less known case is the of Óliver de la Fuente Ramos, Second Division referee who paid 14,200 euros between 2016 and 2019. At the time he was the youngest referee to be promoted to Second Division.
