CSD will also appear in Negreiro’s case

In the case of Negreiro, the High Sports Council (CSD) will also appear. After the prosecutor’s office filed a complaint against Barcelona last Friday, former presidents Joan Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, former directors Albert Soler and Óscar Grau and the former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira for payments of more than seven million euros made by the Barcelona entity to the former head of arbitration between 2001 and 2018, José Manuel Franco confirmed this Monday that the body he heads intends to enter into private prosecution if the Investigative Court No. 1 in Barcelona receives the case on processing i he invited Joan Laporta to explain the role of the Barca club in the biggest scandal in the history of Spanish football.

“The CSD’s intention is to appear, but at the right moment, because we must not forget that the prosecution filed a report before the court of inquiry, that court must receive it for processing and that will be when we, with our legal services, appear already in this goal,” said the state secretary for sports in a statement for “The Ana Rosa Program” on Telecinac.

José Manuel Franco emphasized that they have not taken this step to date due to the desire to be “responsible and coherent”, respecting the time of justice. “You have to let the institutions work, which work very well. The problem appeared in the Tax Administration, it went to the Prosecutor’s Office and they decided to report it. We will see if the Court of Inquiry will accept it for processing, we will follow the logical path,” he said.

The president of the CSD expressed his concern about the problem that is tainting Spanish football and, by extension, to other disciplines. “What is bad for football is also bad for Spanish sport. The club does not pay such a vice-president of referees for nothing,” asserted Franco, who called on Joan Laporta to offer an explanation as soon as possible for the reputational damage caused by the “Negreira case”. “Please, Mr. Laporta to clarify once and for all what happened. If there are things we don’t know, tell them. The FC Barcelona community also deserves an explanation,” he added.

The Secretary of State for Sports recalled that Albert Soler, general manager of the CSD between May 2021 and January 2023, had already left that position when the Negreira case broke and denied that his departure was linked to the Barcelona payments. “I don’t know if Albert Soler knew that or not, I wasn’t aware of that. But when the case came to light, Mr. Soler was no longer in the CSD,” he added.

Laporta continues without giving an explanation As now CSD, also LaLiga, the Spanish Football Federation (FEF) and the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) have previously announced their intention to appear as private plaintiffs in The case of Negreiro, just as Real Madrid did on Sunday at the end of an extraordinary board meeting called by Florentino Pérez. The club from Chamartín made this decision after feeling “damaged” by the issue which has called into question the purity of the competition and which threatens to exclude Barcelona from European tournaments for one season.

The prosecution condemned Barcelonaas a legal person, due to the continuous criminal offense of corruption between individuals in sports, while Bartomeu and Rosell were also charged with the criminal offense of dishonest management and another criminal offense of falsifying a commercial document.

According to the letter from the Prosecutor’s Office, the objective of the Barcelona entity was that, “in exchange for money”, the former number two of the CTA “conduct actions that tend to favor Barcelona in the decision-making of the referees in the matches played by the club, and thus in the results of the competition. The former leader college, however, stated before the Tax Administration that Barcelona hired him because the club wanted to guarantee him “neutral” arbitrations that would not harm him.

Laporta, who continues without explanation, defends that the club is “innocent of what they are accused of” and attributes everything to “a campaign against their honor” in which, after Real Madrid’s decision to appear in the case, “they are all there. “