“If there is a culprit, he must pay,” declared Wednesday the president of Spanish referees, Luis Medina Cantalejo, regarding the investigation into the refereeing scandal involving FC Barcelona, nicknamed the “Negreira affair” of the name of the former referee at the center of the scandal. “We want this case to be resolved as quickly as possible and for the culprit to pay, whether it is the Negreira family, Barça or anyone else,” said Medina Cantalejo, president of the Technical Commission of Referees (CTA), during a press conference on Wednesday.
“And if there is someone else and the judge has the names and first names of the arbitrators who were involved in this case, let him make them pay the maximum of what justice provides,” he said. -he adds. FC Barcelona, its current president Joan Laporta and his two predecessors, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, were indicted due to alleged payments to companies belonging to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
According to the prosecution, the Catalan club paid a total of more than 7.3 million euros to Negreira between 2001 and 2018. These payments, made via the company Dasnil 95 owned by the former referee, ended when this the latter left his position as No.2 in Spanish arbitration. Called the “Negreira affair”, this scandal has poisoned the life of Barça for months, which denies any irregularity and affirms that these payments were intended for consultations on arbitration.
“I never had the feeling that the referees gave us an advantage. Never,” said Catalan coach Xavi Hernandez, on the pitch at that time. Its president Joan Laporta said in October that he was convinced that the affair “will end with an acquittal” and denounced “an orchestrated campaign to destabilize Barça”.