(Paris) UEFA announced on Thursday the opening of an investigation into a “possible violation of the legal framework” of the body by FC Barcelona in the context of the arbitration scandal involving the Catalan club.
FC Barcelona and some of its leaders were indicted on March 10 by the Spanish courts for “corruption”, “breach of trust” and “false business records” in the case of suspicious money payments to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, ex-senior official of Spanish arbitration, also prosecuted.
These lawsuits, decided by the Barcelona public prosecutor’s office, target Barça as a legal entity, as well as Josep Maria Bartomeu, head of the club between 2014 and 2020, and Sandro Rosell, president between 2010 and 2014. Oscar Grau and Albert Soler , members of Mr. Bartomeu’s former team, are also being prosecuted.
Seized by the tax authorities on possible irregularities in the payment of taxes by a company belonging to Enriquez Negreira, the prosecution had opened a preliminary investigation in the spring of 2022 in order to verify the reason and the framework for these payments of money.
According to the prosecution, the Catalan club paid a total of more than 7.3 million euros to José Maria Enriquez Negreira, former referee and ex-vice-president of the technical arbitration committee of the Spanish football federation between 1994 and 2018 .
These payments, made through the company Dasnil 95 belonging to Mr. Negreira, began in 2001 and ended in 2018, when the latter lost his position as N.2 in Spanish arbitration and the technical arbitration committee was restructured.
According to FC Barcelona, which denies any irregularity, Dasnil 95 was paid to advise the club on arbitration matters. But the Spanish justice thinks that the sums in question could have been used to corrupt game directors.
On the sporting level, FC Barcelona risks nothing in Spain: the facts, more than five years old, are indeed considered prescribed, according to the president of La Liga Javier Tebas.
On the criminal level, the leaders implicated risk sentences of six months to four years in prison.