The Negreira Case. Everything you need to know

🔹️What is the Negreira case?

In a nutshell, first broke by 'Cadena SER', Barcelona were found to be allegedly making payments worth around €7M to a company (between 2001-2018), owned by former referee José Maria Enríquez Negreira, in exchange for referee decisions in their favor.

These payments from the club stopped in 2018, the same year Negreira was no longer vice-president of a referee committee. 'El Mundo' reported that Negreira threatened to reveal certain irregularities of Barça if they didn’t resume his payments. But in the end, nothing happened.

Bartomeu denied these claims immediately. While current president Joan Laporta also said in a press conference, “Barca has never bought referees nor had the intention to”. They only hired such a service for “technical reports on referees, which is common”.

Barcelona has also been carrying out an internal investigation around this & will explain everything in depth as soon as it’s done. Meanwhile, all La Liga clubs released a joint statement expressing their concern around this case, except Valencia.

Yesterday, the Prosecutor’s office made this complaint effective & filed charges, with Bartomeu, Rosell, Barça (as legal entity) & Grau accused. Note: This is only for payments from 2014-2018, one’s before this period not mentioned in the file.

Following this news, Barcelona released another statement suggesting “the opinion of the prosecutor who’s filing this complaint (of the club paying for bias refereeing decisions) is a hypothesis” & that they “never bought a referee nor tried to influence their decisions”.

Real Madrid have released a statement today saying that following the seriousness of these accusations, they will have a meeting to discuss & see what needs to be done. 'Mundo Deportivo' says Barça are surprised, but won’t say anything until Real Madrid decides what they’ll do.

It has been reported by 'ESPN' that RFEF & La Liga have also provided documents re the Negreira case to UEFA, which could decide to act depending on the eventual outcome. Unknown at this time whether FIFA will come in the scene.

🔹️What’s next?

The prosecutors will continue the investigation. Furthermore, there may be a hearing soon in which witnesses & those accused will testify ('ESPN' say Laporta could be called to testify). If the magistrate feels it’s needed, the case would then go to trial.

🔹️Sanctions:

Right now, the consequences Barça will receive aren’t known since 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗢 𝗷𝘂𝗱𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘆𝗲𝘁. Legal sources told 'Relevo' that Barça, at best, if necessary, would face an economic punishment. La Liga also ruled out a sporting sanction.

But at the same time, despite the above, we don’t know for sure whether it’ll 100% strictly be an economic related sanction, as 1) there’s no verdict/judgement yet and 2) FIFA/UEFA can come in the scene depending on how this case continues to develop. We have to wait and see.

It’s senseless to come to a conclusion already & say “I believe Barcelona/This is awful from Barça” — there’s been no court hearing yet, let alone an official judgement. But for the club’s image, Joan Laporta, as he thinks is in the right, MUST explain this in depth asap.