Barcelona allegedly paid referee over €6 MILLION as scandal deepens

Paul Macdonald

• Updated: 24 Feb 2023 12:03 GMT
• 4 min read

Barcelona's referee payment scandal has deepened as Football Leaks has listed details of amounts adding up to €6 MILLION paid to former official Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.

Negreira was vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees for 24 years and the payments listed stretch across a 17-year period, from 2001 and until 2017. It is noted that the payments stopped at this point, when Negreira left his position.

Football Leaks reports that the payments were made to two companies, Nisdal SCP and Dasnil 95 SL. There are also payments to Negreira's son, Javier Enriquez, through another company, Soccercam SL.

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The first payment would have been made by then-president Joan Gaspart in 2001, before a hiatus until 2006, when Joan Laporta was serving in his first term in charge.

From the 2009/10 season until the payments ceased in 2017, he received no less than €500k every year from the club, via his companies.

There are various notes provided as to what the details of the payments were for. Among these are 'the provision of various educational-sports services' and 'reports on the participation of various actors in the different sports competitions and the monitoring of aspects that may be of interest in the future in said educational-sports field.'

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Barcelona's response to referee payment claims

In a statement released earlier this week, Barcelona said in response: "That in the past FC Barcelona hired the services of an external consultant that supplied the club's technical secretaries with reports in video format of youth players from other clubs in Spain.

"Additionally, the relationship with that supplier extended to technical reports related to professional refereeing in order to complement the information requested by the first and second team coaching staff. This a common practice among professional football clubs. These kinds of outsourced services are now the duty of a professional who works for the Football Department.

"FC Barcelona is sorry that this information has been released precisely when the team has hit its best form of the season. FC Barcelona shall be taking legal actions against those who are trying to tarnish the club's image with possible insinuations against its good reputation."

But on Radio Marca earlier this week former referee Alberto Gimenez made astonishing claims regarding conversations with Negreira that he had held in the past.

He stated: "Negreira pressured me. He met me with other referees and told me: ‘Be careful with what you say on television. You already understand me. Be careful,’ There is a formula for fixing matches. It’s a fool’s trap: I’m a friend of such and such who will support you, you give me so much and I’ll fix it for you."

"If the result is negative, the money is returned. If he wins, he is marked for for life. If he loses and returns the money, he has another chance."

There have been calls for Joan Laporta to resign by La Liga president Javier Tebas, and the investigation is ongoing.