Since the outbreak Negreira case seven months ago, FC Barcelona has not yet been able to clearly justify the supposed professional services for which the entity paid 7.5 million euros over 20 years and four presidencies. That a sports club maintains in one of its expenses chapters the vice president of the organization that ensures the correct sporting development of the competitions in which it participates, no one denies it and is unjustifiable in itself under any consideration of sports ethics. That in addition the treatment that was maintained with the companies of the vice president of the Technical Arbitration Committee (CTA) José María Enríquez Negreira and his son represents an infraction punishable by sports justice or a crime punishable by criminal justice is another issue that continues its procedural path. The qualification that corresponds to the facts will depend on whether it is proven that it was paid to influence the arbitrations or the selection of arbitrators or to determine the final destination of these funds.
Now The investigating judge has just attacked the club’s defense line and the former arbitration leader with an argument that leaves them in a more exposed position. It does not renounce investigating them for sports corruption (a legal type that comes to punish the fixing of matches or specific competitions, difficult to prove) but it incorporates the figure of bribery, for which it would be enough to demonstrate that an individual has paid a person in charge of an entity with a public function (jurisprudence supports classifying the bodies dependent on the RFEF in this way), depending on the position he held and so that he acted in a manner inappropriate to it, something that the investigating judge considers plausible.
Whether this approach is adopted by the prosecution (and by the court that may eventually judge the case) will depend on the extent to which some of its arguments (the consideration of Negreira as a public official for criminal purposes but above all the security with the one who ventures that he carried out actions inappropriate for his position) are finally considered. What can be assured is that this new procedural turn It puts uncomfortable perspectives on the table for FC Barcelona and its leaders. Using a criminal offense that already existed before 2010 (unlike sports corruption) could bring into play the period of the Laporta’s first presidency. The criminal consequences for the club as a legal entity can be limited to a fine, but also reach “closure of premises”, “suspension of activities” or, in an extreme that is difficult to imagine, “dissolution”. And from the point of view of sporting sanctions, it must be remembered that UEFA has not intervened but is keeping the club under observation, attentive to the signals it receives about the ongoing cases.
The case remains open and the police investigation has not yet made progress in determining whether Negreira had an interested influence on the appointment of arbitrators (this is the reason for the registration in the CTA) and much less has he achieved track the destination of the money paid. There are no reasons to prejudge, but there are reasons to consider that the attitude of the leaders of FC Barcelona, between denial and victimhood (although it is true that many of those who point them out are far from being able to exhibit a pristine record in terms of neutrality or management interested in all types of institutional resources), it is increasingly difficult to sustain.