“Barcelona” is driven into a criminal case

The Spanish football club “Barcelona” is increasingly drawn into a corruption scandal, based on suspicions that the leadership of the Catalans could influence the referees who served their matches in the championship and the Spanish Cup. According to El Pais, the Spanish prosecutor’s office is preparing to file charges against Barcelona as a legal entity, as well as to prosecute the club’s ex-president Josep Bartomeu. Charges await the former deputy chairman of the technical committee of referees of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira. He received money from Barcelona for some consulting services. But there is reason to believe that there was something more to this story.

In Spain, the case of the former deputy head of the technical committee of RFEF referees, José Maria Enriquez Negreira, acquires new details. Questions arose after the tax authorities found out that he received a total of about € 1.4 million from Barcelona in 2016-2018. The money was transferred to the account of Dasnil 95, controlled by Mr. Negreira. The funds were not properly declared, and that is why there were claims against Mr. Enriquez Negreira. The collaboration ended in 2018 after Mr. Enriquez Negreira left his post. The club, after the story was publicized, said that they did nothing reprehensible, and Enriquez Negreira’s company only prepared technical video reports on refereeing for team coaches, which is a common practice.

However, as the publication El Pais, the business relationship between Barcelona and Mr. Enriquez Negreira was not limited to the period 2016-2018. The publication claims that the Spanish prosecutor’s office has information that the Catalans began to pay the referee boss back in 2001. Until 2018, Enriques Negreira received a total of more than €6.6 million from Barcelona. El Pais, citing its sources in the supervisory authority, reports that the authorities will bring criminal charges under corruption articles and Barcelona (as a legal entity) , and its former president, Josep Bartomeu (leaving office in 2020), and José María Enriques Negreira. The prosecutor’s office did not confirm this information, but did not deny it either.

In turn, the publication El Mundo reported that Barcelona’s collaboration with Mr. Enriques Negreira may not have actually ended in 2018, when he left his position on the refereeing committee, after which Barcelona terminated the contract with Dasnil 95. It is alleged that Mr. Enriques Negreira regularly sent to the office club letters in which he demanded to continue to pay him. It is noteworthy that he did not use email or fax. He sent what in Spain is called bureaufax. The closest Russian analogue is a letter with an inventory of attachments.

One of the emails allegedly said, “I can help you with VAR. If interested, please contact me.”

In Barcelona, ​​any involvement in any influence on how VAR will work, of course, denied. The club also noted that they had already hired a certain company, which was entrusted with conducting its own investigation into the case.

It is noteworthy that this season Barcelona really got a lot thanks to VAR. According to AS, in the matches with her participation, the referees made a decision on the basis of VAR only once, which brought Barcelona two extra points. Another thing is that Barcelona’s key competitor, Real Madrid, lost four points due to VAR. And if it were possible to cancel all VAR decisions, then it would turn out that the gap between Real Madrid and Barcelona now (24 rounds were played in the Spanish championship) would not be nine points, but only three.

Alexander Petrov