The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor assumes the case against Barcelona in the ‘Negreira case’ | Sports

The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, agreed on Tuesday that the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office assume the investigation of the Negreira case. García Ortiz has issued a decree in which it establishes that the jurisdiction to investigate the facts — which is expected to be assumed by the head of the Barcelona Examining Court 1, Joaquín Aguirre — becomes that of the Prosecutor’s Office specialized in the fight against corruption. The decision is motivated by the fact that these are crimes linked to corruption of “special importance”, as judicial sources have explained to EL PAÍS. “Given the concurrent circumstances, such as the complexity of the facts, their relevance from the economic point of view, as well as the public repercussion and social significance of those,” the decree states, the circumstances exist to attribute jurisdiction to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor.

The Prosecutor’s Office presented its complaint against FC Barcelona on Friday for a crime of corruption in business in the sports field. Between 2001 and 2018, the club paid 7.3 million euros to former referee José María Enríquez Negreira so that he “favored” Barça in decisions. The complaint provisionally concludes that Barcelona tried to rig the competition with those payments that are not justified in consultancies and with which, as Negreira himself admitted in his statement before the Treasury, the Barça entity intended to ensure “neutral” arbitrations.

In addition to Barça as a legal person, former presidents Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell have been denounced. The Prosecutor’s Office attributes the crimes of corruption in the sports field, unfair administration and false commercial documents to both. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has requested that the complaint be filed with Investigating Court 1, which already contains the complaint by a VAR referee against Negreira and his son, Javier Enríquez, for the same events. As a general rule, it is the prosecutor attached to a certain court who hears the matters that fall before that court. The State Attorney General’s Office, however, considers that it is a matter of special relevance that, due to its characteristics, deserves to be dealt with by specialists in this field.

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