FC Barcelona and its ex-presidents Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell had already been indicted in March for corruption, as were José Maria Enriquez Negreira, the former senior Spanish arbitration official at the center of the affair, and his son . Current president Joan Laporta has in turn been indicted for corruption in the investigation into the arbitration scandal involving the Catalan club in La Liga, Spanish justice announced on Wednesday.
Laporta, who had not been charged until now, is now as president of the club during a first mandate which lasted from 2003 to 2010. In his report published on Wednesday, the judge in charge of the investigation explains that he cannot benefit, in his opinion, from the statute of limitations, given the seriousness of the accusations.
According to the prosecution, the Catalan club paid a total of more than 7.3 million euros to José Maria Enriquez Negreira between 2001 and 2018. Payments, made via the company Dasnil 95, belonging to the former referee, who ended when the latter lost his position as number 2 in Spanish arbitration.
A business that is growing bigger and bigger
Called the “Negreira affair”, this scandal has been poisoning the life of Barça for months, which denies any irregularity. The investigation took on a new dimension at the end of September, with the search of the headquarters of the Technical Committee of Arbitrators (CTA), the direction of Spanish arbitration, located in the premises of the Federation (RFEF) in Las Rozas, near Madrid .