The Prosecutor’s Office finalizes a complaint against FC Barcelona for alleged crimes of corruption for the payments that the Barça club would have made to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) José María Enríquez Negreira, according to legal sources consulted by Europa Press.
The Prosecutor’s Office investigates Barcelona’s payments to a company belonging to the former vice president of the referees for corruption
Further
The presentation of a complaint implies putting an end to the investigations carried out at the Prosecutor’s Office to, where appropriate, enter the judicial phase. The investigation of what is now known as the ‘Negreira case’, which was opened last year and was extended in October, focused on an alleged crime of corruption between individuals.
After learning about the investigations of the Public Ministry, FC Barcelona said in a statement that “in the past it hired the services of an external technical consultant, who supplied, in video format, technical reports referring to lower-category players in Spain for the secretariat technique” of the club.
The club specified that the relationship with this external provider “was extended with technical reports related to professional arbitration in order to complement the information required by the coaching staff of the first team and the subsidiary”, something that it stressed as usual in professional football clubs. .
In addition, Barça clarified that these outsourced services currently fall to a worker attached to the soccer area and regretted that “this information appears precisely at the best sporting moment of this season.”
Link to the ‘Soule case’
As a result of the ‘Negreira case’, the League asked the judge of the National Court instructing the ‘Soule case’, on the alleged irregularities in the management of Ángel María Villar as president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, to investigate a series of payments for about 4,400 euros that this entity made between 2011 and 2016 to Negreira’s son.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has supported the request of the General Intervention of the State Administration (IGAE) so that in a new report it can rule on these payments, at the same time that it has supported another request from La Liga: that the former president be charged of the referees committee until 2019 Victoriano Sánchez Arminio.
In the report by the prosecutor Inmaculada Violán, to which this news agency had access, Anti-Corruption adhered to several of the procedures requested by La Liga, although it rejected the RFEF itself being investigated for these events.
