It’s been just over a week since the latest scandal to break at Barcelona, but the dust has had little time to settle. The so-called Negreira case seems only to be getting started.
If you missed the news: last Wednesday it emerged prosecutors are investigating payments totalling €1.4million (£1.2m; $1.3m) Barca made between 2016 and 2018 to a company owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira. At the time, he was vice president of Spanish football’s refereeing committee.
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Enriquez Negreira has denied ever favouring Barcelona in terms of refereeing decisions. Barca have admitted hiring an “external consultant” who provided reports “related to professional refereeing”.
There was a wave of reaction to the revelations, ranging from the concern expressed by the Spanish Football Association and La Liga to fans and commentators speculating whether Barca could be docked points or stripped of former titles.
As it stands, no such punishment appears likely. La Liga said on Friday it cannot investigate any such case that happened more than three years ago.
But prosecutors’ investigations remain open and there is still a possibility that criminal charges will be brought. Both the Spanish FA and Spain’s High Council for Sports, a governmental body, told The Athletic they will respect the legal process before considering any action of their own.
And several former Barcelona executives, who have given testimony to the investigating prosecutors, suggested to The Athletic that the time period in question might be widened.
What’s certain is that more and more details have been coming out over this past week. Let’s bring you up to date.
What’s happened since last Wednesday?
Barca’s payments to Enriquez Negreira’s company, DASNIL 95, were brought to the attention of prosecutors by tax inspectors looking into the company’s finances for 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Shortly after news of the payments emerged, Spanish media outlets published further information suggesting Barca had actually been paying DASNIL 95 since at least 2001. Late on Thursday, documents carried by the newspaper El Mundo put a value on them: just over €6.6m.
El Mundo also published details of a burofax — the Spanish equivalent of a special registered letter — that Enriquez Negreira sent to Barcelona in 2018, after the club decided to stop payments.
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In the document, Enriquez Negreira states that he will cause “a scandal” by “revealing with no hesitation all the irregularities from the club I’ve lived through first-hand”, unless payments are resumed.
“I have the firm intention to sue the club, which would bring negative consequences for FC Barcelona,” he continued.
Speaking to The Athletic, Josep Maria Bartomeu, Barcelona’s president from 2014-2020, acknowledged the existence of the document. He said he did not pay it any attention, forwarded it to the legal department of the club and heard nothing else about it.
“I had never held a private meeting with Enriquez Negreira,” he added.
Bartomeu also claimed that “current president Joan Laporta should be the one to respond” because, he said, “the value of the instalments paid by the club to DASNIL peaked in the last years of his first tenure (2003-2010) at Barcelona”.
According to El Mundo, during the 2003-2004 season, when Laporta became president for the first time, Barcelona were paying €145,758 to DASNIL. After the 2009-2010 campaign, payments rose to €573,398 and continued under following presidents Sandro Rosell and Bartomeu.
Joan Gaspart, Barcelona president from 2000 to 2003, said on Catalunya Radio: “If I remember starting those payments? No, I don’t. If I did, I would not take any phone calls and I would try to disappear, to be honest — and I’m not doing that.”
By the weekend, no voices from inside Barcelona had said anything about the Negreira case that went beyond the club’s initial statement, which acknowledged the hiring of an “external consultant” paid to provide “technical reports related to professional refereeing”.
There was, though, an interesting comment from Ernesto Valverde. The current Athletic Bilbao manager, who was in charge at Barca from 2017 to 2020, said he “did not have a clue” about the work DASNIL was paid for.
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“It’s been a bit of a surprise for me, too,” he said on Saturday.
“During my time in Barcelona, I didn’t look at them, and actually didn’t even know they existed.
“It’s something common: here, at Athletic Bilbao, we have our reports about the referees that we are going to have on the next game.
“I imagine the story will get clearer with time. We don’t have the full picture so I prefer to remain cautious about that.”
Valverde’s position is perhaps a sensible one. But in the meantime, there are a lot more questions to ask, like the next one…
Who is Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira?
Enriquez Negreira, born in Barcelona in September 1945, made his debut as a referee in Spain’s top flight in the 1979-80 season. He became vice-president of the Spanish FA’s technical committee of referees in 1994.
Reports in the Spanish media last week quoted testimony given by Enriquez Negreira to Spain’s tax authorities, in which he said Barcelona had paid him “to make sure no refereeing decisions were made against them, which is to say, for everything to be neutral”.
Eduardo Iturralde Gonzalez was a Spanish top-flight referee for 17 years before retiring and his time coincided with Enriquez Negreira’s position as vice president of the referees’ committee.
He told The Athletic: “From my personal experience, Negreira was not a person who had a bond with the match officials. I only met him at the camps the FA set up for referees throughout the season. Now all the referees meet once a week. Back in the day, they set up a big congregation before the season, then once every three months to assess our performances.
“Negreira was there, but at most you would see him when you crossed paths in the hotel corridor. He was not at all involved in the daily issues of our professional life.
“He had more of an institutional role. The referee’s committee has always followed a pretty presidential model: there was one main chief who surrounded himself with his closest circle. Negreira was one of those, but he did not engage with referees.
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“The only thing we want now is to have some light cast over this dark case. All the referees want to clear everything up and expect a broader investigation. From the 20 La Liga referees from my generation, I have spoken with 18 of them. We all are furious.”
Where does this leave Barca?
Barcelona have been reluctant to speak about the subject. However, club president Laporta burst onto the scene again on Tuesday, one day after La Liga president Javier Tebas had his say.
On Monday, after a public appearance to discuss La Liga clubs’ new salary limits, Tebas was asked about the Negreira scandal.
“If he [Laporta] does not justify properly or in a more reasonable way what has occurred, I believe he should resign,” Tebas said.
“Some of the comments they have made as a club have been very superficial. This is inflicting great damage on professional football. We want the prosecutor’s office to raise charges and investigate until the end.”
Laporta used an institutional event at the club to hit back.
“We had been advised that Tebas was promoting a campaign against Barcelona and myself as a president,” he said. “Now he’s shown his true colours. He is obsessed with Barca and has some sort of phobia with our club.
“He can’t forgive us for rejecting his CVC deal. He can’t deal either with the fact we are backing the Super League. His aim is to control Barcelona from a distance, but he can’t do that with me in charge.”
Laporta and Tebas’ public exchange marked another interesting development: how this latest scandal has fast become a new battleground in the contemporary lines of division across the Spanish game, where rebel giants Barca and Real Madrid find themselves clashing with La Liga rather than with each other.
So what can we expect next?
La Liga president Tebas has already confirmed the body won’t be applying disciplinary sanctions to Barcelona as “it’s been five years since the end of their payments to DASNIL and these types of sanctions expire three years after the events have taken place according to our rules”.
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It still remains unclear how UEFA or FIFA could potentially act, given they have their own rulebooks.
UEFA, when asked about the subject, stated they have no position or comment at this stage, adding that it is aware Spanish authorities are conducting investigations.
Barca say they have launched their own investigation, in which they have involved their compliance department and also an external law firm.
Right now, only the three-year period from 2016 to 2018 is under scrutiny at the prosecutor’s office but, after all the evidence raised, its investigation will also aim to establish the origins behind the payments from Barcelona to Enriquez Negreira.
Prosecutors are currently thought to be investigating with a view to bringing charges of corruption between individuals, but it has also been suggested there could be charges for malfeasance raised.
After speaking to sources involved with the investigation, who wish to remain anonymous to protect their position, there is a growing feeling the prosecutor’s office will soon bring some kind of charge that would see the case taken to court, leading to a deeper investigation.
That isn’t a certainty and there are quite a few things that remain uncertain at the moment.
But there’s no doubting the damage that has already been done and the growing concern, from various parties directly or indirectly affected by the scandal, over what more might come.
For example, La Liga sources, who wish to remain anonymous to protect their position, confirmed to The Athletic that there have been worries about the Negreira case’s impact on the competition’s brand and the commercial side of its operations.
Behind the scenes, there’s been a lot going on in conversations between La Liga clubs. On Monday, La Liga held an internal meeting with all the teams to update them on the new salary limits for each club. However, concerns over the Negreira case were quickly thrown into the conversation by multiple clubs, with Tebas also involved in a discussion on how to deal with it.
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All the tensions were publicly revealed one day later when La Liga’s delegate committee, formed by 14 clubs from the first and the second tier, released a statement. It said an attempt to release a shared message by every club had been rejected by only two, without naming them.
