Wow, I thought this was going to be a nothing-burger. Barcelona is getting investigated left and right by the Spanish government, La Liga, and now UEFA over the Negreira refereeing scandal, which could seriously damage the club.
Will this actually be the scandal that takes Barcelona and its current hierarchy down? Eh…maybe as some of the dialogue around this situation is really inflammatory.
A while back, I did cover this story about two decades of alleged corruption between the vice president of the Spanish technical referee committee, Jose Negreira, and the accompanying Barcelona presidents, such as the disgraced Josep Bartomeu, Sandro Rosell, and current president Joan Laporta, during said time frame (2001-2018).
Funnily enough, the nearly €7M of payments to Negreira from Barcelona all stemmed from the financial mismanagement during Bartomeu’s time as the Spanish tax inspectors unearthed the mysterious payment during their investigation of the club’s finances after the bankruptcy filings.
Back to the topic, as far as I’m aware, Laporta himself has not named as one of the conspirators at this time as the investigation has been narrowed down to Rosell, Bartomeu, Negreira, and two other Barca officials, but the latest news of the club getting investigated by La Liga and now UEFA really shocked me.
As I wrote in my previous article, I was under the impression that this alleged conspiracy wasn’t “that big of a deal” (in terms of violating the rules) as not only had Laporta not been named as a conspirator (so far), but the influencing Negreira had as the vice president of the Spanish Referee Committee over the actual refs was minimal at most.
Again, as far as I was aware, Negreira had tried implementing “neutral” (as if being paid by Barca was him being neutral) referees to all league and domestic cup Barcelona games over the last 15 or so years, but his influence wasn’t large enough to actual influence the games.
Obviously, that’s not a great look for a club as historic and “respected” (well, it used to be) as the Catalonian giants, but another fact that convinced me this wasn’t going to amass to much was the strict statute of limitations of such a case.
The reason why the Spanish government had to step in and investigate Barcelona is due to La Liga’ statute of limitations over said cases as the league simply couldn’t prosecute the crimes as they happened to long ago.
Thus, it seemed reasonable that this was simply going to cost Barca a few million euros, a stern warning from the Spanish government, and maybe even a transfer restriction if the appropriate Spanish officials were feeling really brave. To my surprise, the complete opposite has happened.
Not only have the Spanish prosecutors indicted Bartomeu, Rosell, Negreira, and the two other officials on corruption in sport, corruption in business, false administration and the falsification of commercial documents charges (all charges without a short statute of limitations), but UEFA has asked for information/documents from La Liga about this case to potentially set up another investigation that doesn’t have such strict limitations.
Truthfully, it’s very likely these Barca officials will be charged with a few of these crimes as it appears to be a cookie-cutter case without the statute of limitations restricted what can and cannot be administered in a court of law. Therefore, if such an event was to take place, then I don’t see how Barca wouldn’t be investigated and punished by either UEFA or FIFA for corruption charges.
I mean, Barca did pay Negreira millions of euros to get influenced referees officiating their matches, even if said referees had a “neutral” bias imposed upon them prior to the match.
Nonetheless, with La Liga President Javier Tebas hellbent on taking down Barcelona and UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin saying that this case was “one of the most serious” he’s ever seen in his time in football, the walls look like they are crumbling down upon Barca.
I guess that 4-1 Copa Del Rey aggregate loss to Madrid a few days ago doesn’t seem so bad in comparison to the hurt Barca could be in for.
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