Barcelona paid a company owned by the vice president of Spanish football’s refereeing committee a total of €7.3million (£6.4m; $7.8m) between 2001 and 2018.
That was one of the most seismic revelations of a dramatic year for Spanish football in 2023 — with former Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales also dominating headlines.
Since details of Barca’s payments emerged in February of that year, a Barcelona court has been investigating what has become known as the Negreira case — referring to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the man whose company received that money from the Catalan club.
In March 2023, Barca, ex-club officials and Negreira were indicted for “corruption”, “breach of trust” and “false business records”. They all deny any wrongdoing.
Over a year and a half later, the case is still at the evidence-gathering stage.
What’s the latest? The Athletic explains.
How did this start again?
The ‘Caso Negreira’ exploded on 15 February 2023, when Catalan radio show Què t’hi jugues! reported that Barcelona had been paying a company belonging to Enriquez Negreira.
The payments came to light due to an investigation by Spanish tax authorities into a filing made by Negreira’s company (DASNIL 95) which included a sum of €1.4million paid by the La Liga club between 2016 and 2018.
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It soon emerged that Barca had paid a total of €7.3million to Negreira’s companies between 2001 and 2018, a period when he was vice president of the Spanish FA’s technical committee of referees (CTA).
Who is Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira?
Barcelona-born Negreira refereed games across Spain’s top two divisions from 1979 to 1992.
In 1994, he became vice president of the CTA. He was number two to long-serving chief Victoriano Sanchez Arminio. Negreira held that post until 2018 — the year when the Barca payments stopped.
When details of the payments first emerged in Spanish media, several outlets published quotes attributed to Negreira from leaked testimony to Spain’s tax authorities. In this, he said Barcelona had paid him “to make sure no refereeing decisions were made against them, which is to say, for everything to be neutral”.
Negreira arriving at a Barcelona court in March (David Zorrakino/Europa Press via Getty Images)
El Mundo also published details of a burofax — the Spanish equivalent of a special registered letter — that Negreira sent to Barcelona in 2018, after the club decided to stop payments.
In that document, Negreira stated that he would cause “a scandal” by “revealing with no hesitation all the irregularities from the club I’ve lived through first-hand” unless payments are resumed.
What is Barcelona’s explanations of the payments?
Current Barcelona president Joan Laporta admitted in April 2023 that the payments to Negreira had been recorded in the club’s accounts.
“They were recorded with detailed invoices with the appropriate concept and they were paid through bank transfers,” Laporta said in a press conference.
Laporta insisted these were legitimate payments made to Negreira as an “external consultant” who provided reports “related to professional refereeing”.
He added: “FC Barcelona has not committed any activity with the purpose of altering the result of a competition, or receiving any sporting advantage. I am fully convinced and can categorically state this.”
Barcelona president Joan Laporta at his April 2023 press conference (David Ramos/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, former Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu told The Athletic it was Negreira’s son, Javier, who compiled these reports on referees set to take charge of their upcoming games.
Various former and current Barca coaches and players have rejected the idea that the trophies won during the time of the payments, when the team featured stars such as Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry, Lionel Messi, Xavi, Neymar, Andres Iniesta and Luis Suarez, were in any way influenced by favourable refereeing decisions.
In a press conference in February 2023, Ernesto Valverde said: “During my time in Barcelona (2017-2020), I didn’t look at them (Negreira’s reports), and actually didn’t even know they existed.
“It’s something common. Here at Athletic Bilbao, we have our reports about the referees that we are going to have on the next game. I imagine the story will get clearer with time. We don’t have the full picture so I prefer to remain cautious about that.”
In a September 2023 press conference, Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola, Barca’s manager from 2008-2012 said: “What I’m pretty sure (of) is when Barcelona won, it was because they were better than the opponents. We won because we were far better than our rivals. And when they are not, they don’t win, they lose. But justice will decide what really happened.”
How did Spanish prosecutors react?
Under Spanish law, any attempt to “pre-determine or alter in a deliberate and fraudulent manner the result of a match or competition” is a crime.
In March 2023, Barcelona were indicted for “sporting corruption”, “breach of trust” and “false business records” by public prosecutors in the Catalan capital.
Bartomeu (Barca president from 2014-2020) and Sandro Rosell (president from 2010-2014) were also indicted on the same charges, as were ex-club officials Oscar Grau and Albert Soler. All four have denied wrongdoing.
Laporta avoided any charges. Payments to Negreira were made during his first spell as president from 2003-2010, but the statute of limitations for an investigation into that time has expired. Laporta became Barca president for a second time in 2021.
How has the case developed?
Spanish police searched offices at the Camp Nou and the Spanish FA and have interviewed those under investigation.
In June 2023, Judge Joaquin Aguirre Lopez placed Negreira’s son Javier under investigation — changing his status in the case from that of a witness — over charges of money laundering.
In September 2023, Aguirre said no evidence had been found to show the payments had been made to influence match results.
Later that month, the investigation was widened, with a further potential charge of “bribery” added for Barca as an institution, and the former club figures, including current president Laporta. Again, they have denied all the charges against them.
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In March this year, Negreira appeared in court but declined to answer any questions. The 79-year-old’s legal team say he has been diagnosed as suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
In May, a Barcelona provincial court ruled that bribery charges could not be pursued, however the original sporting corruption charges remained in place. Barca viewed this as a victory for their legal team — and it meant the current club hierarchy were no longer being investigated.
Barcelona’s legal counsel also argued that the club itself should be allowed to enter the case as a damaged party, but this request was denied in June.
How have the football authorities reacted?
There has been lots of official condemnation of a club making secret payments to a referees’ chief — but no action has been taken.
“It’s incomprehensible that Barca was paying the vice-president of the referees for so many years,” La Liga president Javier Tebas said at a press conference in April 2023. “I don’t think Barcelona bought referees, but there are indications that the payments were intended to influence. The mere intention can be punishable conduct.”
Tebas also said that Barca would not be punished by Spanish sport authorities as five years had passed since the last payment had been made, and the statute of limitation in sport is just three years.
Meanwhile, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin described the situation as “one of the most serious in football that I have ever seen” in an interview with the Slovenian newspaper Ekipa, also in April 2023.
La Liga president Javier Tebas, pictured in September (Maria Jose Lopez/Europa Press via Getty Images)
He added: “I cannot comment directly on this for two reasons. Firstly, because we have an independent disciplinary committee in charge of this. And secondly, because I have not dealt with this matter in detail. The matter is time-barred for La Liga; for UEFA, nothing is time-barred.”
Laporta met Ceferin a few weeks later to discuss the case. In June 2023, a UEFA report acknowledged the existence of Barcelona’s payments to Negreira, but its investigators decided against any punishment and Barca have continued to play in UEFA competition since.
In September 2023, Spanish police raided Spanish FA offices in Madrid and gathered evidence. No arrests were made and the Spanish FA said in a statement it was cooperating fully with the authorities.
“It’s a very serious situation which damages refereeing and Spanish football,” current CTA president Luis Medina Cantalejo (a former colleague of Negreira) told a press conference in November 2023.
“If there is proof, there should be immediate punishments. We want it to be definitively resolved, and whoever has to pay should pay, whether it’s Negreira, Barcelona or anyone else.”
Is it still a hot topic in Spanish football?
Real Madrid’s decision to enter the case in April 2023 as a damaged party was a key moment in a polarising issue within Spanish football.
Laporta responded by saying in a press conference that he was amazed that Barca’s Clasico rivals would complain, given that: “Madrid was historically favoured in refereeing decisions, it was the team of the regime, close to political, economic and sporting power for 70 years.”
Everyone listening knew that the ‘regime’ that Laporta was referring to was the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.
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Real Madrid’s TV station responded to those comments by broadcasting a video claiming that Franco’s regime had actually favoured Barcelona. The video ended with Madrid’s former president Santiago Bernabeu saying: “Whenever I hear Real Madrid described as ‘the team of the regime’, it makes me want to s*** on the father of whoever says it.”
— Real Madrid C.F. 🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@realmadriden) April 18, 2023
That caused serious tension between the clubs and, for a while, Madrid president Florentino Perez stopped attending Clasicos in Barcelona.
Although their institutional relationship has since improved, fans and pundits on both sides regularly stoke fires. Madrid-boosting media in the Spanish capital never miss a chance to shout Negreira whenever a close refereeing call goes Barca’s way.
That brings its own sensitive reaction from Blaugrana supporters and reporters who feel that officialdom in Madrid is still biased against them. It has all added to a general lack of faith in refereeing in Spain, too.
“The Negreira case is a pity for football,” former match official Eduardo Iturralde Gonzalez told The Athletic in March 2024. “For refereeing, it has done a lot of damage. There was little credibility before, and now there is even less. All the media machinery has cranked up, especially in Madrid.”
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What stage is the case at now?
The most recent development came in late August, when prosecutors charged Negreira’s partner Ana Paula Rufas with money laundering — having reportedly found €3million transferred into bank accounts in her name over the period 1992 to 2023.
In September, Judge Aguirre added another six months to the ‘instruction phase’ or evidence-gathering stage of the investigation.
Barca’s annual financial report sent to club members earlier this month said the investigation had not yet found any evidence of corruption in a sporting environment. At this stage, the report said, a value on potential financial and sporting consequences could not be set.
To move forward, the investigators need compelling evidence that a crime was committed: that Barca’s payments to Negreira were made with the intention of influencing sporting events, or that such an influence actually took place. A strong case that this happened does not appear to have yet been made.
Sources with knowledge of the case — who preferred to remain anonymous to protect their position — suggest that, given the number of charges and witnesses involved, it will take years until the full investigation is completed.
(Top photo: David Zorrakino/Europa Press via Getty Images)