Negreira allegedly testifies against Barcelona and father in corruption case

Javi Enriquez Romero, the son of former Vice-President of the Referees Committee (CTA) Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, has reportedly given evidence against his father and Barcelona during the infamous ‘Caso Negreira’. Barcelona stand accused of sporting corruption, amid suspicion over €7.5m in payments made to Enriquez Negreira over a spell of 17 years.

On Thursday, former Barcelona presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu appeared in court in Madrid, as did Enriquez Romero to give evidence in the case. According to El Espanol, the latter’s testimony did not support current Barcelona President Joan Laporta’s version that the payments were not made for consultancy on referees.

After testifyinh for around an hour and 15 minutes, and allegedly denied that the reports on referee tendencies were the reason for the payments. Enriquez Romero submitted more than 600 reports to Barcelona himself, and El Espanol assure that Enriquez Romero claimed he made €60k from the relationship himself. After leaving the trial, he commented that he had ‘given the truth as he knows it’, and described Barcelona’s payments to his father as ‘unethical’.

However Rosell and Bartomeu painted a different picture after leaving the court. The former told the assembled press, including MD, that ‘the show is for another day, I’m not going to say anything.’ The latter was much more open to speaking, and explained that many falsehoods had been rendered obsolete.

“Some of us who were involved with the club from 2013 to 2018 have come forward. Today it has become clear that many of the theories put forward over the last two years have been quashed. It has been clarified that there were sports advisory services, refereeing reports, and pre- and post-match advisory services for both the first and second teams, and that at that time there was a financial compensation to be paid.”

Bartomeu also went on to deny that the halting of the services in 2018 on Barcelona’s part was related to the exit of Enriquez Negreira from his position at the CTA.

“It has also become clear today that the departure of Mr. Enriquez Negreira from the Federation, when his son was informed, in the first quarter of 2018, that he would no longer be working for Barca at the end of the season, has nothing to do with this theory that one thing was a consequence of the other, which has also been dispelled. President Rosell has also said that at that time the best team in the world and Barça won all the titles of those years on its own merits. Barca has had great successes, we have had the best player in the history of football and we have deservedly won.”

The case has been ongoing for the past two years, and during which an exhaustive investigation has taken place. Initially, a charge of bribery was also levelled at Barcelona, but this has since been dropped. Real Madrid are one of many clubs that have been included in the case as a claimant.