Joan Laporta, President of FC Barcelona, has been charged with bribery.
According to news agency EFE, the court handling ‘Caso Negreira,’ as it is known in Spain, has decided to indict FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta for bribery, sports corruption, unfair administration, and forgery.
The ‘Caso Negreira’ case comprises total payments of around $7.7 million (€7.3 million) made by Barcelona to the former Vice-President of the Technical Committee of Referees, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, and his son over an 18-year period under investigation.
Barca were charged with “continued corruption in the sports field” in April as UEFAEFA+0.1% opened up their investigation in quick succession.
The governing body of European football determined that the Catalans should be permitted to compete in the 2023/2024 edition of its flagship competition, the Champions League, but reserved the ability to impose additional sanctions if new evidence arose. Joan Laporta, President of FC Barcelona, has been charged with bribery.
Because Negreira was a prominent figure at the time, the court hearing the case, court Joaquin Aguirre, requested in September that the accusation of continuous corruption in the sports field be changed to bribery.
This suggestion was made in a court order obtained by El Periodico. Later, two former Barcelona presidents, Sandro Rossell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, as well as two ex-club employees, were accused with bribery, sports corruption, unfair administration, and commercial document fraud.
El Periodico, a Catalan newspaper, obtained a court order detailing how Aguirre agreed to indict current Barca leader Joan Laporta for the same crimes after concluding that payments made to Negreira from 2008 to 2010 during Laporta’s first reign constituted “continued bribery.”
According to Aguirre, not only Laporta, but all members of his board during the time period in question bore “effective responsibility in making the decision to make the allegedly illicit payments” to Negreira and his son Javier.
Furthermore, the 10-year statute of limitations has not passed because it should be measured from July 17, 2018 onwards, when the claimed last act of crime in the case was committed.
Laporta has frequently claimed that Barca did anything improper and maintains that the payments were given in exchange for honest consultation work.
He has yet to reply to the latest developments in the case, which come at the conclusion of football’s international break and 10 days before Barcelona hosts Real Madrid in the current El Clasico in La Liga.
