The Tax Agency warned the Prosecutor’s Office in April 2022 that noor had been able to prove that the payments from FC Barcelona to the former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) José María Enríquez Negreira they had influenced the designation of referees or altered the results of the matches.
According to the report that includes the summary of the cause of the ‘Negreira case’, which EFE has had, The tax authorities maintain that the former referee billed Barça for more than 7.5 million euros without responding to “an accredited economic activity”although he points out that “there is no evidence whatsoever that it could influence the results.”
Treasury points out that “That lack of accreditation and explanation” could be “an indication” that the invoices could be concealing illegal services such as trading with confidential information of the arbitration committee, influencing arbitration appointments or participating in the alteration of results.
However, it emphasizes that these behaviors “They have not been accredited in the inspection procedure”nor is there evidence, according to the Tax Agency, of payments to any arbitrator.
The Treasury reached these conclusions, despite the fact that, in its complaint, The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that, through the presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, the Barça club “reached and maintained” a “strictly confidential verbal agreement” with the then vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees so that “in exchange for money” he could carry out “actions tending to favor FC Barcelona in the decision-making of the referees in the matches they played” and in the “results of the competitions”.
In its report, the Tax Agency also accredits all cash outflows between the years 2016 and 2019 from the current account of DASNIL 95, one of the companies with which José María Enríquez Negreira billed Barcelona.
In that period, 557,871.52 euros were withdrawn in cash of the 1.6 million euros that DASNIL 95 billed between 2016 and 2018, the period investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Treasury and the National Police also assure in the report that these cash withdrawals could be linked to payments to third parties.
The court of Instruction number 1 of the Catalan capital admitted to process the complaint of the Prosecutor’s Office against FC Barcelona and José María Enríquez Negreira for the millionaire payments of the Barcelona entity to the former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees last March 15.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, these payments made by the Catalan club between 2001 and 2018, amounting to 7.5 million euros, could be constituting a continuous crime of corruption between individuals in the sports fielda continued crime of unfair administration and a continued crime of falsifying a commercial document.
In addition to FC Barcelona and Enríquez Negreira, the former presidents of the Catalan club Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former general director of the entity Óscar Grau and the former director of Professional Sports Albert Soler appear as denounced.
