Refereeing corruption reaches Barça with payments of more than 1.6 million euros

The sewers of Barcelona during the mandate of Josep María Bartomeu are much deeper than could be expected. In addition to spying on players or paying companies to tarnish the image of their own stars, they have now added invoices worth 1.6 million euros to the company of former referee Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira for alleged refereeing reports that appear to be "verbal".

Enríquez Negreira was a referee in Spain for 13 seasons. He belonged to the Catalan association and refereed between 1975 and 1992. Once retired, Negreira moved to the Technical Committee of Referees where he was non-executive vice-president until 2018 of the evergreen president of the body Victoriano Sánchez Arminio.

A Camp Nou regular who was never able to referee Barça, but who set up a company called DASNIL 95 with the aim of advising his clients on refereeing. The referees say that both Negreira and his son picked up the "referees" from the airport, took them to the hotel and made their lives easier when they went to referee both Barcelona and Espanyol. His son Xavi was even a coach for many of the referees and helped them to control their emotions and prepare for important matches, something that gave them access to many intimate details.

SER Catalunya has been the media that has uncovered the web of invoices that DASNIL 95 collected from Barça and amounting to 1.6 million euros between 2016 and 2018 for verbal reports on referees. An exorbitant amount that has no physical backing and for which the Catalan Public Prosecutor's Office is calling the club to account.

The scandal is historic and the corruption case could end up with an exemplary sanction for Barcelona, ranging from the loss of points, to being stripped of the titles (two Leagues and three Cups) of those seasons, even being downgraded.

Although Negreira had no specific job and hardly made any decisions, the fact that a CTA official was paid by a club to advise on refereeing calls into question the whole refereeing system of those seasons and casts doubt on the behaviour of the referees.

Football does some justice on the pitch. Eleven against eleven and a referee with too many cameras on him to make clamorous decisions against a team. But the figures for those three seasons show a tendency to benefit the Catalan club, who went two years without a penalty against them and had more opponents sent off than Real Madrid. Enough for the suspicions to become something more.

The RFEF, to which the CTA belongs, has announced that it will investigate and the CTA itself is putting itself in the hands of the courts. But they have not been categorical in communicating that they will clarify responsibilities and that they will open an investigation. In Las Rozas, the carpets hide many corpses from past eras, to which are added those from the Rubiales era.

Barça has made a serious mistake in its defence. Laporta recorded a video and put the spotlight on a black hand that wants to harm the club now that it is in the lead. At no time did he argue what these payments were due to and it had to be Bartomeu who commented in the Marca newspaper that "all clubs have reports" to justify these large payments.

The seriousness of the facts may end in nothing. The Public Prosecutor's Office will investigate and come to its conclusions, even sanction Barça financially if the crime is proven, but in sporting terms, Spanish football's credibility is at stake in this case.

The RFEF and LaLiga, intimate enemies, have in Barça (and Real Madrid) an economic locomotive and without their presence in the elite the value of the product would be greatly damaged. Even Real Madrid itself would be left alone in the Spanish elite if the sanction was administrative relegation.

The usual, a financial penalty, the loss of points and a moral damage that time will repair. What has become clear is that Barça's levers started much further back than with Laporta's arrival at the club.