Barcelona scandal of buying referees: Crucial evidence revealed
Spanish newspaper El Mundo has revealed further evidence showing that Barcelona has paid for favorable decisions from referees in La Liga for a long time.
Barcelona just had a dramatic draw against Manchester United in the Europa League. In La Liga, Xavi’s team is currently leading the standings. These are positive signals on the field, but off the field, the Nou Camp home team is constantly facing troubles.
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Spanish newspaper El Mundo has just exposed the Barcelona scandal of potentially buying referees in La Liga for a long period of time. Documents have been discovered showing that they made payments to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the former vice-president of the La Liga referees council, up to 33 times through a company owned by Negreira during the period of 2016-2018, totaling over 1.6 million euros.
Sources prove that Negreira’s company, DASNIL 95 SL, existed solely on money paid by Barcelona as it had no actual business operations. Immediately after, former president of Barcelona, Josep Bartomeu, admitted that this had been happening since 2001 before Laporta became president of the football club for the first time. The total amount paid by Barcelona is up to 4.7 million euros.
“Barcelona has been paying referees since 2001. Laporta discovered this in 2003 and he continued to do so. In 2010, we continued to do it because that money helped the first team and the youth team,” according to Bartomeu. Bartomeu also said that he was the one who put an end to the payments to referees in 2018 due to the club’s financial difficulties.
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In the latest development, El Mundo has continued to publish new evidence. Two buro fax (private faxes) from two La Liga referees were sent to Barcelona threatening to expose a “big scandal by revealing abnormalities in the favorable decisions for Barcelona made by La Liga referees” after Bartomeu stopped the payments.
Furthermore, Barcelona will have to accept “unfavorable decisions in the future”. This threat is no different from the assertion that the Catalonian club has paid money to “buy” favorable decisions from referees for many years.
Currently, Barcelona has admitted to making payments to Negreira, but claimed it was for the purpose of “consulting on proper conduct towards referees for players” and is willing to bring this matter to light. However, this new evidence could result in the Nou Camp club facing even greater consequences in court.
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