Barcelona referee scandal: Club faces charges from prosecutors

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By Martin Graham | 11th Mar 2023

Barcelona are in even more trouble as the authorities have now charged them with corruption in the referee payment scandal.

News came out in early 2023 about the Catalan giants soliciting the former vice president of refereeing in Spain, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, with €7.3 million (£6.4 million) between 2001 and 2018. The money was reportedly paid to a firm owned by Negreira for reasons that were previously unknown.

The club fought the allegations and released a statement in February denying any wrongdoing. According to the statements, the money was paid as consultation fees for “technical reports related to professional refereeing” and called it “a common practice among professional football clubs”.

The allegations quieted down in the media until Friday night, when official charges were presented to the courts in Spain by prosecutors. The charges claimed that the LaLiga giants did in fact solicit Negreira for corrupt purposes.

The public prosecutors listed former Barcelona presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu as key figures in the corruption charges. Both men have been under fire since Joan Laporta took over the club for their handling of it, leading it to near financial ruin.

These new charges add to what they have to deal with as they continue to face the consequences of the decisions they took when they were at the helm of affairs for Barcelona at different times.

Prosecutors claim that money was paid to Negreira to influence results for Barcelona on the pitch in various domestic competitions. The complaint specifically focuses on a payment of €2.9 million that happened between 2014 and 2018.

Said payment – made by former presidents Rosell and Bartomeu – were to seal a “confidential verbal agreement” with Negreira.

A senior Barcelona official, meanwhile, has downplayed the charges as “nothing more than an absolutely preliminary investigative hypothesis” from the prosecutors and that “now is when the judicial investigation properly begins.”

The unnamed Barcelona official also added that “the club will fully cooperate with the investigation in all means necessary” and “reiterates that they have never bought any referee nor have tried to influence any official’s decisions.”

Negreira, however, has told the Spanish tax agency, the originators of the claims, that Barcelona’s goal with the payments was to have “neutral” referees in their games, according to El Pais newspaper.

Laporta already has his hands full with Javier Tebas and LaLiga trying to stop him via the courts from signing players and renewing the contracts of already existing ones. This is one lawsuit he cannot afford to take on at the moment, as it threatens to shake the very foundations of one of the very few fan-owned football clubs remaining in the world.

More news as the story unfolds.