FC Barcelona, several of its former directors and the former head of arbitration José Negreira were charged this Friday with corruption, breach of trust and false commercial records, in a case of large payments to the former soccer referee.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint with the Barcelona Examining Court number 1 against the club, as a legal entity, as well as against its former presidents, Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell.
The case arises from the investigations that the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office began about a year ago and which show that the former head of Spanish arbitration received, through a company, almost seven million euros for alleged verbal advice to the club, between 2001 and 2018.
This case, in which the Catalan club is continuously associated with the crime of corruption in business, will join another, the result of a complaint filed in recent weeks by the former referee and current video referee Estrada Fernández against Negreira and the company Dasnil 95., for sports corruption.
Alleged fiscal irregularities committed by Negreira’s company exposed, in May 2022, the payments received by the former vice president of the Technical Commission of Referees.
According to the Spanish court, Barcelona “maintained a strictly confidential verbal agreement” with José Negreira, so that he, “in exchange for money, would carry out actions tending to favor Barcelona in the decision-making of the referees” in their matches.
Source: TSF
