Barcelona president Joan Laporta has been charged with suspected bribery.
The charges related to payments made to companies linked to the former vide president of the refereeing committee, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
They stem from Laporta‘s first spell in charge of the Blaugrana, which took place between 2003 and 2010, after a judge ruled that the latter years should not be time-barred.
Also mentioned among the accused are former presidents Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell, as well as Negreira and his son, Javier Enriquez Romero.
Rosell was Barcelona president from 2010 to 2014. He was replaced by Bartomeu, who resigned after six years in charge, with Laporta voted in as his replacement in 2021.
Laporta wasn’t initially named as a defendant when charges for alleged bribery were filed against Barcelona back in September.
Ten-year statute of limitations from the last payment
The judge noted that the facts investigated may constitute, among others, a crime of continuous bribery, so that, according to the Criminal Code, the statute of limitations is 10 years from the day on which the last criminal offense was carried out or the criminal conduct ceased, in this case July 2018, the date of the last payment to Negreira and his son.
This makes the final two years of Laporta‘s first tenure punishable. Barcelona paid Negreira‘s companies $7.3 million between 2001 and 2018 while he was the vice president of the refereeing committee.
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Laporta has said that the payments were for “technical reports about referees” and has denied that the club ever influenced or bought referees.
That isn’t how prosecutors see it, as they have accused Rosell and Bartomeu of having an agreement with Negreira, a former top flight referee, in which “he would carry out actions aimed at favouring Barcelona in the decision-making of the referees in the matches played by the club and thus in the results of the competitions.”
Barcelona were charged with alleged corruption in sport, corruption in business, false administration and the falsification of commercial documents back in March.
Bribery charges were added in September after the judge noted that Negreira was a civil servant because he “exercised public functions” as vice president of the referring committee.
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