Former FC Barcelona presidents to testify on Negreira referee corruption case

Former FC Barcelona presidents Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell will testify as people interested in the Negreira referee corruption case in June.

Both former leaders are part of the investigation on the alleged payments made by Barça for 18 years to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), José María Enríquez Negreira, and his son, Javier Enríquez Romero.

The judge is investigating the alleged €7.5 million.

Rosell and Bartomeu had already been charged with corruption back in March 2023 regarding these alleged payments.

Bartomeu will testify on June 17 and Rosell on June 30. The first former president's testimony will coincide with the testimony of Ana Paula Rufás, Negreira's wife. Meanwhile, Rosell will testify on the same day as Enríquez and former Barça board members Albert Soler and Òscar Grau.

Back in May, a court in Barcelona ruled that the jury could not investigate FC Barcelona on bribery charges as the vice president of the referees' team was not a public employee. Therefore, the case could only continue as sports corruption.

Negreira was the vice president of the CTA between 1994 and 2018.

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." 

Listen to our Filling the Sink podcast episode published on April 29, 2023 to learn more about it.

On February 15, 2023, FC Barcelona released a statement acknowledging the payments for external services, as reported by Cadena Ser network broadcast.

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.