The Investigating Court number 1 of Barcelona already has in its possession the complaint filed by the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office for the ‘Negreira case’. The Public Ministry accuses the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), José María Enríquez Negreira, the former presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, as well as two of their directors, Óscar Grau and Albert Soler, in addition to the club as a person legal, of a continuous crime of corruption in business, in its modality of sports fraud, another of unfair administration and one of falsification of a commercial document.
While the investigation by the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office has been paralyzed as a result of the criminal complaint filed by VAR referee Xavier Estrada Fernández against Enríquez Negreira and his son, for corruption and sports fraud, Barça is charged as a legal entity for a crime of corruption in business, which includes fraud in the sports field and came into force with the reform of the Penal Code of 2010. As it is an alleged ongoing crime, the penalties would be more serious, both for Barcelona (a sanction economic superior) as for the two predecessors of Joan Laporta in the presidency of a club that is already also being investigated by UEFA. The highest body of European football could even punish Barça with its exclusion from continental competitions for at least one season.
Bartomeu and Rosell are the two presidents of Barcelona indicted for the scandal of payments to Enríquez Negreira, to whom the culé entity paid seven million euros between 2001 and 2018. The crime of corruption in business, without being continued, is punishable by between six months and four years in jail. Joan Gaspart and Joan Laporta, despite maintaining their relationship with the number two of the arbitration group, the latter in his first spell at the helm of the club, are not investigated, as the facts have prescribed.
UEFA threatens
Barça could not be penalized in Spanish competitions, since according to the current Sports Law, and also the previous one, very serious offenses prescribe after three years, but UEFA threatens the Blaugrana club after also studying the case after the information sent by LaLiga and the Spanish Football Federation (FEF).
The tax irregularities of Enríquez Negreira’s company were the ones that uncovered last month one of the biggest scandals in history, not only in Spanish football, but also in sports, due to payments to the arbitration leader for alleged arbitration advice. Barça continues, however, without giving explanations about events that have called into question the cleanliness of the competition and the integrity of the referees. In the case of Enríquez Negreira, he has accepted his right not to testify, alleging that he suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.
As a legal person, during Bartomeu’s presidency, Barça was already sentenced, in 2016, for two tax crimes committed in the signing of Neymar. The club then accepted the payment of a fine of 5.5 million euros, but the dimension that the ‘Negreira case’ has reached for alleged corruption and fraud exposes the entity not only to an administrative sanction, but also to a feared punishment sports in Europe.
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