The Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office has formalized its complaint in the Negreira case and includes former presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep María Bartomeu as investigated. In addition, the complaint is also directed against the former executive and sports directors, Òscar Grau and Albert Soler, as well as the former vice president of the Referees Technical Committee, José María Enríquez Negreira. The complaint has been filed with the examining court 1 of Barcelona, ??which had already received the complaint filed on his own initiative by the arbitrator, still active, Xavier Estrada Fernández. The Public Ministry investigates the scandal for the crimes of corruption between individuals and unfair administration in its continued version with what the crimes prescribe in ten years. With the exception of Rosell, the rest of those investigated are also accused of document falsification.
The Prosecutor’s Office, after a year of investigation, concludes that the money that Enríquez Negreira collected was to “favor Barça in the decision-making of the referees in the matches that the club played.” According to the complaint, Barcelona through its presidents Rosell and Bartomeu reached a “verbal agreement” with Negreira to give the club favorable treatment. The prosecution recalls that the Committee of Referees is in charge of appointing referees in official Spanish competitions and is responsible for the promotions and demotions of referees.
Negreria collected a total of 7.3 million euros in 2001 and 2018, according to the history of invoiced amounts. It supposes “a remuneration not provided for in the club’s statutes or approved by the General Assembly for which it lacked a title to justify it,” the complaint states. In the period investigated, between 2014 and 2018, with Rosell and Bartomeu in the presidency, Enríquez Negreira received 2.9 million euros from Barça, including VAT. The two companies that Negreira set up, NILSAT and DASNIL95, “were fed entirely on the income from Barça, which was withdrawn with bearer checks.” The invoices issued by the former referee’s companies “did not correspond to the provision of services”, warns the prosecutor’s office, which also points out that during the investigation when they asked the club to present the videos on the referees that Negreira made and Barça replied that “it is not I had found the required documentation.”
As of 2016, Negreira’s son becomes Barça’s supplier instead of his father. The object was still “technical video advice”. But to prevent the company from being hired directly by Barça and so that the Negreira surname was not directly related to the club, whoever hired the services of Negreira Jr. was a company owned by the manager who died in 2022, Josep Contreras. Contreras’s company then billed Barça for some services and kept a commission. Between June 2016 and October 2018, Contreras paid the Negreria company 297,085 euros. And then Contreras invoiced Barça 450,120 euros with which the manager pocketed 153,034 euros for acting as an intermediary.
Barcelona ended the relationship with Negreira in May 2018 just when he stopped being vice president of the Referees Committee. In February 2019, the former referee sent a burofax to the Cabinet of the presidency threatening to air the irregularities if they did not continue to pay him. “Personally, I do not profess animosity towards any person from the Club, neither against you nor especially against Mr. R or Mr. C, and I am not willing to publicize all the irregularities that I have known and experienced first-hand in relation to anyone of the Club, but you will force me to do so if you do not reconsider your decision and comply with the agreement that we had to continue counting on my services until the end of the presidential mandate. I have the reason and the right that protect said claim. Both you and Mr. R, as Vice President and President and vice versa, not to mention others, agreed with me on the agreements that today you intend to break with impunity,” Negreira wrote.
