FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta under investigation for bribery and other crimes, according to court document

By Matias Grez and Patrick Sung, CNN

(CNN) — FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta is officially being investigated as a “suspect” in an ongoing alleged improper payment scandal, according to court documents obtained by CNN – the latest twist in a scandal overshadowing the club and Spanish soccer.

The investigation relates to alleged improper payments made by Barça to José María Enríquez Negreira, a former leading refereeing official in Spain.

In late September, Judge Joaquín Aguirre López, the magistrate who is presiding over the case in the 1st Investigation Court of Barcelona, officially named Enríquez Negreira, his son Javier, FC Barcelona and several of the soccer club’s former executives as suspects for “the sustained crime of active bribery.”

The inclusion of Laporta as a suspect comes as Aguirre López continues his investigation and marks the first time the Barça president has been officially implicated in the ongoing scandal. Aguirre López has yet to decide if charges are merited against the suspects.

CNN has reached out to FC Barcelona for comment from Laporta but has yet to hear back. In a reply to Spanish outlet Mundo Deportivo, the club said it was aware of the judge’s decision regarding Laporta and that the club’s lawyers were working on a response.

In an interview with Catalunya Ràdio on Thursday morning, Laporta said he and the club were aware that he could eventually become a suspect in the investigation, but that the allegations are “not true.”

“Knowing the history of this judge, we were on guard to get our defense ready, the defense of Barça, and it was a possibility that I would also end up being investigated,” Laporta said. “There’s no basis [to being named a suspect] because there’s no crime of bribery – and there’s no continued crime.”

“We have demonstrated that there were services, and there was documentation in exchange for these payments. … The other hypothesis that’s out there is that the judge is saying that these payments were because we had bought referees, we had fixed matches and that Barça had benefitted. They haven’t been able to prove that, and they won’t be able to prove that because it’s not true.

“I have to be confident in the justice system that this will end up with an outcome that will absolve Fútbol Club Barcelona, so I want to be clear that from a legal and technical perspective, we aren’t worried.”

In September, a Barça source told CNN that the club did not have an official statement on the investigation but added that its lawyers had considered all possible judicial outcomes – including the naming of the club as a suspect – and was working and moving forward on that basis.

Earlier this year, prosecutors filed an official complaint in a Barcelona court alleging that the club practiced “continued corruption between individuals in the sports field” in what has been dubbed the Caso Negreira – “the Negreira case” – in Spanish soccer.

However, Judge Aguirre López said in September that, rather than continued corruption, the alleged crimes being committed by Negreira, Barça and the other suspects constituted bribery.

Prosecutors alleged several current and former club officials were aware of payments – worth over €7 million (nearly $7.4 million) – invoiced to two companies founded by Negreira, who was serving as a CTA vice president from 1993 to 2018, which “acted on behalf and in direct benefit to Barcelona.”

The CTA is the governing body responsible for deciding which referees and assistants officiate league and national competitive matches in Spain.

According to the prosecutor’s official complaint, filed in March this year, the club is accused of coming to a “strictly confidential verbal agreement” with Negreira with the aim of producing “actions which tended to favor Barcelona in the form of refereeing decisions.”

In February, Barça said that a “thorough and independent investigation” was underway and, in March, an FCB source strongly denied to CNN that the club had at any time bribed a referee or tried to influence refereeing decisions.

When asked in September about the investigation, Blaugrana head coach Xavi said: “You already know my opinion about the Caso Negreira. Next week, there will be another story about Negreira. In 15 days, another one. And in a month and a half, another one too.”

He added: “I have never had the feeling, never, and I repeat it, that the referees have benefitted us. Never.”

Wednesday’s court document primarily sought to calculate the date the statute of limitations expired on the alleged crimes to determine if other people could be investigated.

Aguirre López cited article 131 of Spain’s Penal Code to expand the statute of limitations for the alleged crimes to 10 years from the last known alleged “illicit” payment – July 17, 2018 – extending the “punishable” period to July 2008 which coincided with Laporta’s first tenure as FC Barcelona president, which ran from June 15, 2003, to June 15, 2010. Laporta began his second term as club president in 2021.

“As such, the statute of limitations of the crimes referred to previously has not expired in respect to [Laporta], as well as those people who were members of the Board of Directors of FC Barcelona respectively during his leadership,” Wednesday’s court document read.

“It is agreed to extend the condition as a suspect for the cited crimes to [Laporta] and all the people who were members of the Board of Directors of FC Barcelona during his mandate or who were integrated into the club organizational structure and who had effective responsibility in the making of decisions to make the presumptive illicit payments to the suspects.”

The court document reiterated that the club’s payments “had the effect on refereeing desired by FC Barcelona, in such a way that there must have existed an inequality in the treatment with other teams and the consequent systemic corruption in the group of Spanish refereeing.”

The court went on to say that, by “logical deduction,” not all of the referees in that time were corrupt, “but a group of them, yes.”

CNN has reached out on multiple occasions to Negreira via his company for comment but has not received a response.

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