An investigation begins against Enríquez Negreira and his son and former Barça presidents Josep María Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell.
Joaquín Aguirre, Head of the Court of Instruction Number 1 of Barcelona, accused FC Barcelona of bribery in the Negreira case on Thursday; at the same time it starts an investigation against Enríquez Negreira and his son and former Barça presidents Josep María Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell.
Added to these allegations is that officers of the Economic and Technological Crime Group of the Barcelona Judicial Police Unit are searching the offices of the Technical Commission of Referees (CTA), located at the headquarters of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) in Las Rozas (Madrid ). ), looking for documentation related to the Negreira case.
The judge is of the opinion that “the payments made by FC Barcelona have, by logical deduction, satisfied the interests of the club, given their duration and annual increase.” According to the judge, “the crime of bribery is consummated as soon as the payment is made, regardless of whether or not the systemic corruption of Spanish arbitration resulting from such payments is proven.”
Aguirre attributes to Enríquez Negreira “an ongoing crime of passive bribery as perpetrator,” his son is accused of the same crime, but “if necessary collaborator”, while Barcelona and its former directors are “attributed a continuing crime of active bribery”, all this “without prejudice to maintaining the alternative classification of the crime of sports corruption of Article 286bis 4e CP, at least during this instruction phase .
“Anyone who, by immediate provision of law, by election or by appointment of a competent authority, participates in the exercise of public functions shall be considered a public servant.” says it supports the case law of the Supreme Court lon the magistrate’s decision to charge Negreira as a public servant. It is to say, Enríquez Negreira should be considered a civil servant for criminal purposes because the RFEF, the entity to which the CTA belongs, is a public legal institution.
The judge states that the millions of payments to Negreira “satisfied the interests of the club” and “brought about the arbitrage effects desired by FC Barcelona, in such a way that there must have been inequality in treatment with other teams and the resulting systemic corruption throughout Spanish arbitration.”
This is a novelty, because the investigation so far has attributed to those involved a crime of corruption in the field of sports, with the sentences for this type of crime ranging from four months to three years. However, The crime of bribery now being charged carries harsher sentences (between three and six years) and means the case will be tried by a people’s jury.
Source: Goal