Barcelona president Joan Laporta and club directors are under formal investigation for suspected bribery over alleged payments of £6.3m to Spain’s referees’ boss with the probe which is already two decades of activities at Spain’s refereeing committee set to reveal more shocking revelations.
Alleged payments made to 17 firms owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira when he was the vice-president of Spanish refereeing committee from 1993 to 2018.
LaLiga champions Barcelona have denied any wrongdoing, saying in a statement in February that the club had paid an external consultant who supplied it with ‘technical reports related to professional refereeing’, which it said was a common practice among professional football clubs.
Laporta, who started a second term as Barca’s president in 2021 replacing Bartomeu was also at the helm of the Catalan club affairs from 2003 to 2010.
In March, prosecutors filed a complaint over alleged payments of more than €7.3million (£6.3m) over 17 years to firms owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, who was vice-president of the Spanish football federation’s refereeing committee from 1993 to 2018.
Last month, investigating judge Joaquin Aguirre Lopez said Barcelona may have benefited from graft and put the club under investigation for suspected ‘active bribery.’
Now Aguirre also named as suspects Laporta and ‘all those who were members of the board of directors of FC Barcelona during his mandate or who had an effective responsibility in decision-making to allegedly make the illicit payments’ to Negreira and his son.
