The Uefa has opened a formal investigation into Barcelona Soccer Club for a possible violation of the legal framework of the governing body of European soccer in relation to payments made by the squad to a company owned by a senior referee, the body said on Thursday.
a court of Barcelona agreed to review the case last week after prosecutors filed a complaint about what they allegedly were payments of 7.3 million euros (7.95 million dollars) between 2001 and 2018 to companies owned by José María Enríquez Negreira.
negreira He was vice president of the arbitration committee of the Spanish Football Federation from 1993 to 2018under the then President Victoriano Sánchez Arminio.
Negreira was not immediately available for comment.
“According to article 31(4) of the UEFA Disciplinary Regulations, UEFA Ethics and Disciplinary Inspectors have been appointed today to carry out an investigation into a potential breach of UEFA’s legal framework by the FC Barcelona in relation to the so-called ‘Negreira Case,'” UEFA said in a statement on Thursday.
The State Attorney General, Alvaro Garcia Ortizasked on Tuesday for the case to be transferred to the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office due to the high-profile nature of the allegations.
The prosecutors’ complaint focuses on 2.9 million euros paid between 2014 and 2018 and alleges that FC Barcelona, with the help of the former presidents of the club Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeureached a “confidential verbal agreement” with Negreira.
In a statement last month, the club denied any wrongdoing, saying it had paid an outside consultant who provided “technical reports related to professional arbitration”. This was standard practice among professional soccer clubs, he said.
A high position of Barcelona He told Reuters the club was waiting for the prosecution’s complaint, describing it as “nothing more than an absolutely preliminary investigative hypothesis.”
The official said the club will fully cooperate with the investigation and reiterated that “He has never bought any referee or tried to influence the decisions of any referee”.
“I really want to face all the scoundrels that are staining our shield”said the president of the Barcelona, Joan Laporta, in an act held by the club with the captains of the different sections at the beginning of the month. Rosell was not available to comment.
The league It said this month that it reported the case to UEFA because no sanction could be imposed under Spanish sports law as three years had elapsed since the alleged infringements, according to its president Javier Tebas.
“As we could not intervene because it had prescribed, we wrote to UEFA”Thebes said in an official statement earlier in the month.
Source: Ambito
I am Pierce Boyd, a driven and ambitious professional working in the news industry. I have been writing for 24 Hours Worlds for over five years, specializing in sports section coverage. During my tenure at the publication, I have built an impressive portfolio of articles that has earned me a reputation as an experienced journalist and content creator.
