25/1/2024–|Last updated: 1/25/202411:04 PM (Mecca time)
Spanish judge Joaquín Aguirre decided to drop the investigation into sports corruption in the Negrera case, due to a lack of evidence, which means FC Barcelona is acquitted of the charges against it in this case only, according to Spanish media.
Accusations were brought against Barcelona nearly a year ago of granting money to Jose Negrera, the former vice president of the Technical Referees Committee in the Spanish League.
The case was called the “Negrira scandal”, in which the Catalan club was accused of sports corruption and providing money to the former official in order to obtain arbitration benefits, and an investigation into the case has been opened since then.
The document leaked from the investigating judge indicates that it is not clear that Barcelona obtained any benefit from paying money to the Vice-Chairman of the Referees Committee, Negrera (more than 7.5 million euros over 17 years).
🚨 The judge in charge of the Barcelona-Negreira case can no longer pursue the trail of sporting corruption because there is no evidence pointing in that direction after investigation.
The judge does not believe that Barça could have influenced the results. However, the case… pic.twitter.com/d6SDuSZI4d
— Transfer News Live (@DeadlineDayLive) January 24, 2024
The Spanish newspaper “Sport” indicated that after investigating the referees' bank accounts, the decision was made that there were no direct payments.
According to the document submitted, it appears that the judge is investigating this case only for the presence of some tax crimes but not sports corruption.
This does not mean that Barcelona is out of the crisis yet, which means that his innocence remains incomplete, in light of the possibility of his involvement in a tax fraud case, or the possibility of discovering that money was illegally taken from the club.
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No buying the referees, no manipulating the results or anything like that. Judge Joaquín Aguirre, the investigator in the Negrera case, has already presented his conclusions and explains that he sees no evidence that Barcelona could have influenced the previous referee to achieve better results or that there was a buy-in of the referees as… https://t.co/P4NmiosfrC
— FCB World (@forcabarca_ar) January 24, 2024
Barcelona will be required to show the reasons that made it grant money to Negrera, in addition to the presence of an amount of 558 thousand euros paid to a third party by the club.
The bribery charge is still against Barcelona, and Barcelona will be judged according to the ruling that will be issued against Negrera himself in the case.
