HE FC Barcelona He filed an appeal with the Barcelona Court this Monday. Against the order of Judge Joaquín Aguirre, who is investigating the Negreira case, in which he blames the club and its former presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu and to two former executives for bribery. The Barça organization, through its lawyers, openly denies that José María Enríquez Negreira, the former vice president of the Committee of Technical Referees (CTA), the main defendant in the judicial process, can be branded as a public official and that this organization is carrying out work. people. Barça said the judge resorted to bribery “He puts a rearview mirror facing the year 2001 that the payments linked to José Enríquez Negreira had begun” and produced “a kind of procedural elephantiasis” by projecting the defendant’s ultimate status onto other boards and other management teams, regardless of the vote that “could have given” the prescription for the crime.
The crime of bribery is committed by “public authorities or officials” who receive or request gifts or fees in order to perform an action contrary to their “spontaneous duties” during the performance of their duties. According to the judge, Barça’s payment of more than seven million euros for seven years to the former referee leader or his son will fall within the scope of this crime and will equip Enriquez Negreira as an official for this. Technical is an organization that performs functions of a public nature. In this way, he claims, Enríquez Negreira “discharged his public duties” as vice president of that committee. Therefore, when bringing up this crime, he compares him to an officer for criminal purposes.
But, The appeal submitted by Barça’s lawyers, Cristóbal Martell and Marc Molins, argues that this is not the case. First, Enriquez Negreira cannot be considered a public official because his appointment is made by the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), who is “non-authoritarian” and even “unofficial”. The letter states that although the RFEF “is an association entity governed by private law” and performs “some public functions by delegation”, these are limited by law and “none of them are performed by the CTA or it”. Vice President.
Negreira’s appointment
“In short, it is clear that Enriquez Negreira “was not appointed by the (qualified) express and immediate provision of the law and did not attain public office” through an election “understood in accordance with doctrine and jurisprudence” in electoral processes involving public office positions such as mayors or councilors. , “they are not appointed by the competent authority,” a regulatory provision that turns temporary, temporary, and labor and administrative contractors into civil servants “for criminal purposes.”
And it emphasizes that The person who appoints him is the president of the RFEF. and that it is not authority because it “lacks command, that is, the capacity and compulsion to carry out what is commanded.” To defend this theory, lawyers collected a decision from the Supreme Court in which the ruling that “the president of the sports federation has official or assimilated status” was rejected. “Well, if he’s not the president, it’s unlikely he’s the person who reports to him and is his appointee,” the objection states. It recognizes that the RFEF may exercise “public functions of an administrative nature”, including disciplinary powers. However, this power is stated to be “exclusively” and “remaining and very limited” to “technical aspects of members’ performance”. And he emphasizes that this action “is not the fulfillment of public duty”, because the behavior they approve is neither included in sports law nor in sports disciplinary regulations.