the court found Barcelona’s payment of €7.5 million to judge Negreira to be bribery – Kommersant
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Judge Joaquin Aguirre found that Barcelona committed a criminal offense when it made payments to football referee Henriques Negreira and his son, the newspaper reports. The Debate. Receipts from the club in favor of the judge, which lasted 17 years (from 2001 to 2018) and amounted to €7.5 million, were classified by Judge Aguirre as bribery. The football club did not comment on the information to The Debate. Barcelona faces expulsion from La Liga and exclusion from European competition.
On March 15, the court accepted for consideration a complaint from the prosecutor’s office against two former Barcelona presidents, Josep Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell, as well as the club itself. The materials of the supervisory authority stated that for money the team received from Negreira, who held the position of vice-president of the Spanish refereeing committee, reports and videos analyzing the profile of the referee, who was supposed to work at the next La Liga or Spanish Cup match.
Judge Aguirre found Negreiro to be an official with a criminal purpose because he received outside remuneration while performing the public function of refereeing matches. The court decision shows that Negreira, after being fired as vice-president of the refereeing board in mid-2018, sent a damning letter to former club president Bartomeu, stating that “if they do not continue to pay him, he will open a number of facts that could seriously prejudice the judge.” According to Aguirre, this fact indicates that Negreira understood that he was committing a serious crime in favor of Barcelona.
In April 2023, Barcelona president Joan Laporta confirmed the existence of payments to Negreira. At the same time, Laporta said that the club “had no intention of rigging the competition in order to gain a sporting advantage.” According to him, there is “nothing criminal” in paying for advice, and refereeing in Spain has historically been on the side of another club, Real Madrid.
Currently, according to the publication MarcaSpain’s Civil Guard searches for documentation on Negreira’s case at the headquarters of the technical committee of judges in Las Rozas de Madrid.
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