LaLiga offensive as an accusation in the ‘Negreira case’. In a document presented to the Investigating Court number 1 of Barcelona, ??the sports association chaired by Javier Tebas has claimed the imputation in this procedure of Javier Enríquez Romero, son of the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) between 1994 and 2018 José María Enríquez Negreira, for receiving money from FC Barcelona, ??either for his company through an intermediary or for work at his father’s company.
In the petition to the court, to which this medium has had access, LaLiga points out that in her order to initiate the investigation the magistrate accused the former presidents of Barça, Sandro Rosell and Josep María Bartomeu, two former directors and Enríquez Negreira, but not to his son Javier despite the fact that the complaint by referee Xavier Estrada Fernández requested it. The court argued that Enríquez Negreira “exclusively” controlled the companies that received payments from Barça, some 7.3 million euros, and that the former ‘number 2’ of the referees explained to the treasury “that he never revealed the agreement to his son confidentiality reached with FC Barcelona”.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Rosell and Bartomeu presumably reached “a strictly confidential verbal agreement” with Enríquez Negreira, then vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), so that “in exchange for money” they will carry out “actions tending to favor” Barça in the decision-making of the referees who whistled their matches and thus adulterate the result of the competition. However, LaLiga considers that for this purpose the former referee had the “active and necessary cooperation” of his son Javier in a possible ongoing crime of corruption between individuals.
For this, they provide documentation such as the payments that Enríquez Romero received from Dasnil, his father’s company, some 110,000 euros in three years, for the reports he made for Barça and both Bartomeu and the former directors Óscar Grau and Albert Soler indicate that they had relationship with Javier Enríquez, not with his father. In addition, LaLiga points out that, in his statement to the Police, Enríquez Romero explained that he made reports for Barça between 2015 and 2018 and billed a former intermediary manager through his company.
Despite this, there are payments of “significant economic amounts” directly from Barça to this company between 2003 and 2006, when Joan Laporta was president and Javier Enríquez worked for the Spanish team. In the search carried out by the police at the home of former manager José Contreras, now deceased, for the “‘Soule’ case, the agents found a handwritten sheet specifying the work carried out by Javier Enríquez for Barça which, in addition to reports and videos, include “the accompaniment function of the referees to the hotel or airport”.
However, LaLiga considers that the “possible influence of Enríquez Romero on the arbitration group” would be in the payments he received from six referees for coaching services between 2016 and 2018, such as Óliver de la Fuente Ramos who paid 10,200 euros. Another of them, Santiago Jaime Latre paid 1,400 euros to Javier Enríquez between May 2016 and April 2017 for this service and at that time, according to LaLiga, he refereed Barcelona four times, (in a Barça-Sevilla and a Barça-Granada both with Barça victory). The accusation details that in both cases Enríquez Romero made the previous reports for Barça about the arbitration and they add that at the beginning of 2018 Latre refereed a Barcelona-Betis and a Barcelona Athletic Club.
The case also includes payments of 7,400 euros from referee Javier Alberola Rojas to Enríquez Romero between November 2018 and December 2019 after Barcelona ceased its payments to Dasnil, Negreira’s company, in June 2018. However, LaLiga Remember that in February 2018 Alberola Rojas refereed in Barça’s 6-1 victory over Girona.
The accusation also reminds the court that three other referees, currently in the VAR, paid Negreira’s son for the ‘coaching’ service between 2016 and 2018 amounts ranging from 300 to 1,500 euros. That is why LaLiga asks the court that Javier Enríquez be considered as being investigated in this procedure.
In another document presented in the Investigating Court number 1 of Barcelona, ??LaLiga also indicates that “it has no objection” for Real Madrid to be a private prosecution in this procedure, just as the Prosecutor’s Office opined. Despite this, the Public Ministry rejected that the lawyer Luis José Sáenz de Tejada Vallejo, with more than 40 years as a Real Madrid partner, was an accusation in this proceeding, considering that “admitting the proposed representation would lead us to the legal and social absurdity of having to assume, with identical arguments, that of any other member of any other club that had competed for the League title with FC Barcelona during the period investigated. Both Rosell and Bartomeu and the former manager Albert Soler have asked the court to reject Real Madrid’s request to be an accusation in this case.
In addition, the State Attorney’s Office on behalf of the Higher Sports Council asks to be an accusation in the procedure against Barça and the former number 2 of the referees, considering themselves “harmed or offended.” He also asked the judge to prosecute a compromising partner of Barça and a resident of Tenerife who requests that the investigation be expanded against Joan Laporta and Joan Gaspart for these payments to Negreira. In a few days the court must rule on all these requests while it is waiting for the report from the Civil Guard.
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