Barcelona, Real Madrid and the €8.4m Negreira payments: A shadow over El Clasico
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Dermot Corrigan
Investigations into Barca's €8.4million payments to a former referees chief are still ongoing
It is almost three years since payments totalling €8.4million (£7.2m; $9.7m) made by Barcelona to former Spanish referees committee vice-president Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira first came to light.
A Barcelona court has been investigating the payments sent between 2001 and 2018 to companies connected to Negreira, and the coming months may see the case move forward into a criminal trial, which could eventually bring jail time for those involved if they are found guilty.
All have maintained that there was nothing wrong with any of the payments, but huge questions remain over why they were made and what was received or expected in return.
A lack of public clarity about what really happened has not stopped many in Spain and elsewhere from loudly voicing their opinions, with the ‘Caso Negreira’ now often a bitter topic of dispute between Barcelona and their Clasico rivals Real Madrid.
The mood is especially animated ahead of this evening’s Supercopa de Espana final between Barca and Madrid in Saudi Arabia. Here, The Athletic recaps the latest developments in the case and explains what the next steps might be.
How did things heat up recently?
December saw several high-profile witnesses called to give testimony in court, including Barca president Joan Laporta and former coaches Luis Enrique and Ernesto Valverde.
The weeks before Christmas also saw Real Madrid president Florentino Perez make a series of public comments referencing the case.
“Christmas is a time to reflect on things which concern us, and Real Madrid’s greatest concern is the situation with refereeing in Spain,” Perez said at a lunch with the media on December 15.
“The situation is so serious after what happened in the Negreira Case for almost two decades. It all makes clear the need for a radical change in the structures of Spanish refereeing.”
That came three days after Laporta testified as a witness in front of judge Alejandra Gil. According to reports in the Spanish media (various outlets carried details of his leaked testimony), he again defended the payments to Negreira as legitimate and claimed the whole case was an “orchestrated campaign” against the Camp Nou club.
“FC Barcelona has never taken any action which was aimed at altering the competition to gain a sporting advantage,” Laporta was reported to have said under oath. “It’s clear that this is an orchestrated campaign to tarnish a glorious era in our history.
“Barca then became a global example, for what we won and how we won. Now it seems this could happen again, and it seems this process is dragging on.”
Later that week, Real Madrid’s official TV channel produced a five-minute-long video outlining alleged inconsistencies in Laporta’s evidence. He responded to this video when speaking at the Catalan club’s Christmas dinner.
Laporta, pictured outside a Barcelona court in December (Alberto Paredes/Europa Press via Getty Images)
To applause from an audience of Barca players, staff and directors, Laporta said: “We will not permit such movements from those who confuse power with unenlightened despotism, and are usually the first to practise cynicism and move through life with an arrogance as excessive as it is shocking, those who have a monstrosity of a television show that only vomits lies, and (is) constantly and permanently poisoning things.”
Such vitriolic exchanges have occurred regularly since Real Madrid decided to formally enter the Negreira case as a damaged party in April 2023. Laporta responded at the time by claiming that “Madrid was historically favoured in refereeing decisions, it was the team of the regime, close to political, economic and sporting power for 70 years.”
The ‘regime’ Laporta was referring to was the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975.
Real Madrid’s TV station responded with a video claiming that Franco’s regime had actually favoured Barcelona, which ended with Madrid’s former president Santiago Bernabeu saying: “Whenever I hear Real Madrid described as ‘the team of the regime’, it makes me want to s*** on the father of whoever says it.”
Since then, while Madrid-boosting media in the Spanish capital never miss a chance to shout Negreira whenever a close refereeing call goes Barca’s way, the issue has also become caught up with Perez’s long-running campaign to take control of how refereeing is organised in Spain.
Barcelona supporters, including those in the media, continue to react sensitively to any suggestion that any of their trophies won by past legends such as Lionel Messi, Pep Guardiola and Andres Iniesta were in any way illegitimate, and they continue to feel that officialdom in Madrid remains biased against them.
It will make for a frosty atmosphere in the VIP seats at the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium on Sunday evening, where Laporta and Perez will sit with Spanish FA president Rafael Louzan and the Saudi dignitaries.
“Relations between Real Madrid and Barca are bad, they’re broken,” Laporta told reporters on Saturday. “There are lots of subjects which have distanced us… Which doesn’t mean there isn’t respect, which we always have to maintain. We’re going to act with respect and in a civilised way. But in this sense, relations are totally broken.”
Asked whether the two sides were reconcilable, Laporta said: “In football, everything is reconcilable, as in life. But it depends on the parties’ willingness.”
How did all this begin?
In February 2023, Catalan radio show ‘Que t’hi jugues!’ (on Cadena SER Catalunya) first reported the news that Barcelona had for years paid money to a company belonging to Negreira.
The payments came to light during a Spanish tax authority probe into a filing made by one of Negreira’s companies (DASNIL 95), which included €1.4million paid by the Catalan club between 2016 and 2018.
It soon emerged that Barca had paid a total of €8.4million to various companies controlled by Negreira between 2001 and 2018, while he was vice-president of the Spanish FA’s technical committee of referees (CTA).
How have Negreira and Barca explained the payments?
When details of the payments first emerged in Spanish media, several outlets published quotes attributed to Negreira from leaked testimony to Spain’s tax authorities in which he said Barcelona had paid him “to make sure no refereeing decisions were made against them, which is to say, for everything to be neutral”.
Laporta explaining the Negreira payments at an April 2023 press conference (Joan Valls/Urbanandsport /NurPhoto via Getty Images)
At a press conference in April 2023, Laporta said the club had made legitimate payments to an “external consultant” who provided reports “related to professional refereeing”. He stated firmly that “Barcelona has not committed any activity with the purpose of altering the result of a competition, or receiving any sporting advantage”.
How has the legal case developed?
Barcelona were indicted by public prosecutors in the Catalan capital in March 2023 for “sporting corruption”, “breach of trust” and “false business records”.
Also indicted on the same charges were Negreira himself, Josep Maria Bartomeu (Barca president from 2014-2020) and Sandro Rosell (president from 2010-2014), along with ex-club officials Oscar Grau and Albert Soler.
All have denied any wrongdoing.
Judge Silvia Lopez Mejia opened the ‘instruction phase’ (an evidence-gathering stage of the investigation), but the case was then transferred to Judge Joaquin Aguirre Lopez.
In June 2023, Aguirre Lopez placed Negreira’s son Javier Enriquez Romero under investigation for possible money laundering. He denies wrongdoing.
Javier Enriquez Romero outside a Barcelona court in September (David Zorrakino/Europa Press via Getty Images)
When Negreira Sr was called to give evidence in March 2024, he did not answer any questions during a court appearance, with the 80-year-old’s lawyers claiming he is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
In May 2024, a Barcelona provincial court ruled that bribery charges could not be pursued, which meant the current club hierarchy — including Laporta — were no longer being investigated.
In August 2024, prosecutors charged Negreira’s partner Ana Paula Rufas with money laundering, having reportedly found €3million transferred into bank accounts in her name over the period 1992 to 2023. She denies wrongdoing.
In January 2025, judge Aguirre retired, and the case was taken over by a new judge, Alejandra Gil.
Why is Negreira’s son involved?
Enriquez has become a key figure. Last September, he gave evidence to Gil’s court as a person under investigation.
A former youth teamer at Barcelona, who later played professionally in Spain’s Segunda Division, Enriquez was a member of national coach Luis Aragones’ staff when Spain won Euro 2008. He later provided consultancy services to both the CTA and individual Spanish referees — per his online CV.
Enriquez told the court last September that between 2012 and 2018, he was paid €60,000 a year by Barcelona for reports on referees ahead of Barca and Barca B games. This arrangement was overseen, he said, by former Barca director Josep Contreras (who died in December 2022).
When questioned in court about invoices Barca paid to companies of which he and his father were directors, over a much longer period, Enriquez said he had been shocked to hear about these payments and had asked his father for an explanation.
“I had no idea at all that my father had invoiced Barcelona for even one euro,” Enriquez said. “My father, for his personal ethics, had always told me he could not work for any football club, while VP of the referees association. So I was very angry. I called my father and asked for an explanation, eventually he told me he advised the club, but he told me ‘what the f*** has it got to do with you’.”
What did December’s witnesses say?
Although payments to Negreira were made during Laporta’s first spell as president from 2003 to 2010, the statute of limitations for an investigation into that time has expired, so he has not personally faced any charges.
During his December court appearance, he was questioned as a witness, and defended the payments made to Negreira’s companies during his first term as Camp Nou chief.
“For me, (Negreira) was a former referee, who, with his son, did reports with their analysis,” Laporta testified. “We decided to continue the payments as the service of technical advice on refereeing was useful.”
When questioned about the details of these invoices during his first term as president, including a payment apparently made by Barca from 2005 for €60,000, apparently for ‘aloe vera gift packs’, and multiple payments made for analysis of refereeing at the 2010 World Cup, Laporta repeatedly answered that he could not remember such details from the past. “Payments lower than €1million would not reach the board of directors,” he said.
Asked about Barca having paid taxes due on invoices to Negreira’s companies for 2016, 2017 and 2018, Laporta said the invoices were “processed by the club’s accountants, reviewed by tax authorities, and audited”.
Laporta also said that reports were compiled for use by the club’s coaches in preparing the team for games, arguments also made by former Barca presidents Rosell and Bartomeu when they gave evidence last September.
However, both Luis Enrique (Barca B coach from 2008 to 2011, and first team coach from 2014 to 2017) and Ernesto Valverde (Barca first team coach from 2017 to 2020) said in their testimony in December that they were unaware such reports even existed.
“Nobody mentioned any reports to me, or showed me any reports, I can assure you of that — not to me, nor anybody who was on my staff,” current Paris Saint-Germain head coach Luis Enrique told the court, again according to Spanish media reports carrying details of his leaked testimony.
“I knew nothing about these reports, I did not request them, nor was I offered them,” current Athletic Club of Bilbao coach Valverde said. “They were apparently nothing to do with my job.”
What’s the key legal argument?
Judge Aguirre Lopez wrote in September 2023 as he moved the case forward that “It is presumed by pure logic that FC Barcelona would not pay Negreira around €7million since 2001 if it did not benefit them”.
Among those who have joined the judicial investigation as an injured party is former Spanish referee Xavier Estrada Fernandez. “We believe the mere fact that money was paid by a club to a vice-president of the CTA is already a crime,” Estrada Fernandez told The Athletic.
However, Catalan lawyer Victor Ballbe Sanfeliz told The Athletic that securing a conviction for the crime of ‘sporting corruption’ requires proving the intention to influence the results of games.
“It is not enough to prove substantial, opaque, or seemingly unreciprocated payments,” Ballbe Sanfeliz said. “It is essential to demonstrate that such payments were part of a scheme aimed at manipulating the competition.”
‘Sporting corruption’ is a relatively new crime in Spain, and just one case has been brought to conviction since it was introduced into law in 2015. That is the ‘Caso Osasuna’, which saw ex-Osasuna president Miguel Angel Archanco and former executive Angel Maria Vizcay being given prison sentences in 2020 for their role in a match-fixing case during the 2013-14 season.
“The crime of match-fixing requires proof of specific actions such as meetings, agreements, payments linked to specific matches, instructions, or patterns of refereeing decisions that reveal a fraudulent intent,” Ballbe Sanfeliz said.
“In the Negreira case — based solely on what has been published in the Spanish media — there are payments made over more than a decade, but no record of any of the above.”
What might happen next?
Ballbe Sanfeliz said that, given the scarcity of precedents in sporting corruption jurisprudence, predicting the outcome of the Negreira Case is difficult.
The ‘instruction phase’ of the case is due to end on March 1, after which the judge has 10 days in which to make a final decision on whether to move forward towards a criminal trial.
The prosecutors and all defendants would have a chance to appeal that decision.
Individuals being charged with other economic crimes, such as falsification of documents and accounting fraud, is also possible, although Ballbe Sanfeliz said that the Caso Osasuna precedent makes it very unlikely that Barcelona as a club can be found guilty of such offences.
Legal sources with knowledge of the case — who preferred to remain anonymous to protect their position — suggest that it may take years until the full investigation is completed.
How have the football authorities reacted?
While there have been lots of official condemnations of a club making secret payments to a referees’ chief, no action has yet been taken by either La Liga, UEFA or FIFA.
La Liga president Javier Tebas said back in March 2023 that the competition body “could not take any action” because they happened too long ago. He said he would have opened an investigation if he knew about the payments back in 2019, but now must leave it in the hands of prosecutors because the case was “time-barred in sports law, but not in criminal law”.
La Liga president Javier Tebas, pictured in October (Arnold Jerocki/Getty Images)
In June 2023, a UEFA report acknowledged the existence of Barcelona’s payments to Negreira, but its investigators decided against any punishment and Barca have continued to play in UEFA competition since.
Current referees association (CTA) president Fran Soto said in November that he wanted a quick resolution of the case so that a line could be drawn under it forever.
“This is doing a lot of damage to refereeing, although there is no (current) referee under investigation,” Soto told La Cope radio station. “I hope there is a verdict as soon as possible so we can forget about it and move on.”
Everyone just forgetting about Negreira and moving on seems unlikely, no matter how the legal case eventually ends up. Former referee Estrada Fernandez said the whole saga does not reflect well on any of those in authority in Spanish football.
“There’s lots of noise and controversy, but nobody thinks about the good of football or improving the standard of refereeing,” he said. “Everyone looks after their own, defends their own interests, rather than looking to find out the truth.”
