August 6 – The refereeing payment scandal which for months engulfed Barcelona but which has seemingly drifted under the radar has burst back into the spotlight.
Last year Spanish prosecutors filed a complaint over payments Barca allegedly made from 2001 to 2018 totalling millions of euros to a company owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the former vice president of Spanish football’s refereeing committee.
Barcelona has consistently denied any wrongdoing or conflict of interest, saying it paid an external consultant for “technical reports related to professional refereeing”, which it said was a common practice among professional clubs.
Nevertheless, in October last year investigating judge Joaquin Aguirre Lopez said the club may have benefited from corruption and put them under investigation for suspected “active bribery”.
Now, according to El Mundo, the Spanish Civil Guard have concluded that Barca paid Negreira a total of €7.5 million for refereeing advice that has never been discovered, implying no such written reports may ever have actually existed and fuelling rumours that Barca could have acted secretly.
Furthermore, the Civil Guard also apparently claim that they’ve found €3 million in the accounts of Negreira’s wife, which they say cannot be accounted for.
Barca insist they are not guilty of any corruption whatsoever though when the story first broke UEFA said it, too, had opened an investigation “regarding a potential violation of UEFA’s legal framework by FC Barcelona in connection with the so-called Caso Negreira.”
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