Barça bribery charges dropped in Negreira case, Barcelona Court says

The Barcelona Court has ruled that the jury cannot investigate FC Barcelona on bribery charges in the 'Negreira' case, as announced on Friday.

The court states that the Spanish Football Federation is not a public entity, and the vice president of the referees' team was not a public employee.

For this reason, the court states that the club cannot be under investigation, nor its president Joan Laporta, former president Josep Maria Bartomeu, and two former board members.

The court case can now continue as sports corruption, as there were alleged payments of millions over decades from the club to the vice president of the Spanish referees' board, José María Enríquez Negreira.

The club celebrated the announcement as they will "continue to believe that via justice they will clarify all complaints filed against the team and show the innocence of the group," a short statement reads.

Negreira payments case

On March 10, prosecutors accused FC Barcelona, Negreira, two former Barça presidents, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, and two former Barça directors, Òscar Grau and Albert Soler, of corruption.  

The letter submitted to the court accused Barça of having "reached and maintained a strictly confidential verbal agreement with the accused Negreira, so that, in his capacity as vice president of the CTA and in exchange for money, he would carry out actions tending to favor FCB in the decision-making of the referees in matches that the club played, and thus in the results of competitions." 

The fact that the charges made are 'continuous,' as opposed to a one-off event, means that the potential penalties could be even larger. 

Current Barça president Joan Laporta has fervently denied the club have ever cheated: "Barça has never carried out any action with the objective or the intention of altering competitions or obtaining any competitive advantage." 

Barcelona have attempted to explain that the payments were for reports, sometimes delivered audiovisually and sometimes verbally, about the characteristics of referees in charge of their games, but the size of the payments involved continues to raise eyebrows.