The Prosecutor’s Office has appealed to the Barcelona Court the order of the Court of Instruction number 1 of Barcelona in which the president of FC Barcelona, ??Joan Laporta, was considered to be under investigation for several crimes related to the ‘Negreira case’. The Public Ministry considers that these crimes “would be prescribed”, be it document falsification, corruption between individuals, disloyal administration or even possible bribery, despite the fact that prosecutors have not yet ruled on the accusation of Judge Joaquín Aguirre for bribery to the former presidents of Barça Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell, two former directors as well as the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees José María Enríquez Negreira and his son Javier for payments received from the Barça club of 7.6 million euros 2001 to 2018.
In their appeal, prosecutors believe that the start of the calculation of the limitation period for Laporta begins when he leaves the presidency in 2010 of his first term. The Prosecutor’s Office complaint was presented in 2023 and in principle it was not against the current Barça leader. That is why they believe that the statute of limitations has already passed, regardless of the applicable criminal offense, including possible bribery. For the Public Ministry, it makes no sense, even though the continued crime is applied as the judge does, that a president be prosecuted for the acts committed by the next.
Thus they remember that during the investigation “the option has never been raised” of the existence of a bond of criminal solidarity that could involve “all the presidents under investigation and the people who were part of their successive boards of directors” in a common criminal action. . “At no time has it been considered that the different participants acted in a kind of distribution of roles with reciprocal causal contributions that could give rise to what has been called joint or reciprocal imputation of the action,” the appeal states and they add that “each president, each board of directors is responsible, where appropriate, for the payments made to Mr. Enríquez Negreira during the period in which they held their positions.
In this way, they emphasize that Bartomeu’s payments cannot be attributed to Rosell or “to him those made by Laporta”, especially taking into account that there is “not even the slightest indication” of “any form of agreement, connivance, agreement or concert between the successive leaders of FC Barcelona”. Furthermore, the Prosecutor’s Office rejects the judge’s argument of the presence of Barça “as a common element” of the “successive payments to Enríquez Negreira” to impute Laporta by the judge since he considers it an “adhesive authorship.” The prosecutors believe that this situation “neither adds nor subtracts from the individual criminal responsibility of each of its presidents or directors for their own acts” and details that the Penal Code establishes a “specific system of penalties with its own submission to the prescriptive deadlines.” in reference to the legal entities that would affect the Barça club.
Furthermore, the Prosecutors detail that of the crimes attributed by the judge to Laporta, the most serious would be punished with 7 and a half years in prison, so the statute of limitations would be 10 years. In this sense, they remember that for continued active bribery the penalties range from 4 to 7 and a half years, depending on the applicable type of crime, so “whatever the option chosen and even in the most serious cases” the time of prescription would have already passed with the current Barça president. Furthermore, they believe that it cannot be applied, as the magistrate does, in this case to count the statute of limitations taking into account “as the last infraction the day of the last payment made” by Barça to Enríquez Negreira on July 17, 2018.
When Laporta leaves his first term, the presidency in 2010, that date would fall within the 10 years that would not have expired, according to the judge, which the Prosecutor’s Office opposes. They believe that that payment from 5 years ago cannot be attributed to Laporta, so the crimes attributed to him by the court would be statute-barred since “sufficient years have passed” to exclude the current Barça leader. Thus they remember that his “possible crimes” expired on July 1, 2020 and ask that his accusation be revoked.
