Will there be charges?
©IMAGO
Spanish champions FC Barcelona have taken legal action against Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez. The Catalans submitted the request for arbitration required in Spain. If there is no agreement, Barcelona announced that they would file a criminal complaint for defamation.
The background is statements made by Pérez about the Negreira case at a press conference on May 12th and in an interview the following day. The Negreira case concerns payments made by FC Barcelona between 2001 and 2018 totaling around 8.4 million euros to companies owned by José María Enríquez Negreira, the then vice-president of the Spanish Referees Committee. The judiciary has been dealing with these payments since 2023. The investigation was extended again at the beginning of 2026 by six months until at least September 2026.
As the Catalans said in the statement, they were accusing the Real president of knowingly making false allegations that had damaged the club’s reputation. With the request, Barça wants Pérez to withdraw the statements in question.
Pérez: “Largest corruption case in the history of football”
Pérez described the Negreira case as “the biggest corruption case in the history of football.” Barcelona had paid for Negreira’s services for two decades, Pérez said, among other things. As a result, the arch-rival was regularly favored by referee decisions and thus influenced the competition. Numerous championships were “stolen” from Real Madrid as a result.
In April 2023, Barça President Joan Laporta rejected all allegations of possible “sports corruption” and spoke of a “public and media hunt”. Like other clubs, they sought “professional advice” from a person with “experience in arbitration”. You paid for referee advice and analysis.
So far there is no evidence of rigged games or direct bribery of referees. LaLiga president Javier Tebas also stated in an interview at the beginning of 2026 that “Barcelona did not bribe any referees, as it appears in the reporting.”