Big uproar in Spain: FC Barcelona is facing an investigation by the public prosecutor. It is about payments in the millions that are said to have flowed to a referee boss. The top club rejects the allegations.
FC Barcelona is in need of explanation: The public prosecutor is investigating payments in the millions that the Spanish top club has paid in the past to a high-ranking official in Spanish refereeing. The club immediately rejected the allegations.
Did the Catalans influence referees with payments totaling €1.4m between 2016 and 2018? The radio station Cadena SER and the daily newspaper "El País" reported that the money had been paid to a company owned by José María Enríquez Negreira. At the time, he was Vice-President of the Referees Committee of the Spanish Football Association.
Striking: When the official left the committee in 2018, the payments are said to have stopped. Ex-Barca boss Josep Maria Bartomeu, during whose tenure the transfers were made, wanted to immediately eliminate the serious suspicion of fraud at Cadena SER and explained that the transfers had ended due to a new austerity policy.
The Spanish club around Germany's national goalkeeper Marc-André ter Stegen also reacted promptly on Wednesday and made an official statement. It states that FC Barcelona "has in the past engaged the services of an external technical consultant who provided the club's management with video reports on Spanish youth players". These services have been expanded to include reports "on professional refereeing", which is only part of "common practice".
The club firmly rejected the accusation that the money had been paid to influence the referees. In addition, FC Barcelona regrets "that these reports appeared at the sporting best time of the current season". Barcelona manager Xavi reacted angrily to the media reports. He's totally behind the club. "We always analyze internally the referees who are assigned to us," he explained to journalists. "We're doing that, sure, but we've been doing it for many years, it's not new news."
Enríquez Negreira, meanwhile, has told Cadena SER that over the years he has only "advised" FC Barcelona and never given preference. The public prosecutor's office is still investigating possible tax offenses by Enríquez Negreira, according to the reports, since it has not been proven that consideration was actually given for the payments.
