According to a media report, FC Barcelona transferred a total of 6.6 million euros to a referee official – and received a threatening fax.
The Madrid-based daily newspaper “El Mundo” reported on Thursday (February 16, 2023) that the traditional Spanish club had been making payments to Dasniel 95 SL since 2001. The company is owned by the former referee Jose Maria Enriquez Negreirafrom 1994 to 2018 Vice-President of the Referees Committee of the Spanish Football Federation.
According to the report, the total amount of transfers in these 17 years is 6.6 million euros – “El Mundo” refers to information from the club. Most recently, media reports and government investigations revealed that FC Barcelona had transferred 1.6 million euros to Enriquez Negreira between 2016 and 2018.
Threat to “publicize irregularities”
According to “El Mundo”, annual payments increased significantly when Joan Laporta first became president: from 145,758 euros in the 2003/04 season to 573,398 euros in 2009/10. Laporta has been Barca president again since 2021. The payments ended in 2018 when Enriquez Negreira left the Football Association. The then President Josep Maria Bartomeu justified the end of the contract with austerity measures.
Spicy: “El Mundo” quotes from a fax that Enriquez Negreira sent to FC Barcelona in 2019. Accordingly, he threatened to go public if Barca stopped paying. Then he wants “Put publicly any irregularities that I have experienced first-hand in relation to the club”.
Investigations into suspected corruption
This is new fuel for the discussions about what considerations the lavish payments brought with them. According to media reports, the Barcelona public prosecutor’s office is investigating Enriquez Negreira for possible tax offenses, as it is unclear what considerations the payments had. In addition, the public prosecutor’s office has been investigating for months on suspicion of “corruption between private individuals”.
FC Barcelona had stated publiclyhe only commissioned reports on players and referees, “to supplement your own information”. that be “common practice in professional football clubs”.
Enríquez Negreira had also said to the radio station “Cadena SER”, only Barca “advise” how to behave towards individual referees. He never preferred the club when making decisions.
Lucky with referee decisions?
However, fans and journalists in particular in the greater Madrid area, the home of archrival Real, sense deeper connections. The newspaper “AS” calculates that between 2003 and 2018 Barca did better in refereeing than the other six teams that were continuously in the first division during this period.
‘AS’ compared the number of penalties and red cards for Barcelona with those for Barcelona’s opponents. The relationship was clearly in favor of Barca, after 2018 and Enriquez Negreira’s withdrawal from the association, the difference reduced significantly.