Anti-corruption prosecutors Luis María García Cantón and Ricardo Saez Garea appealed to the Barcelona Court against the accusation of the current president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta, regarding alleged bribery in the Negreira case. It begins when he left the presidency during his first term in June 2010, not in July 2018 as the judge calculated for the last crime (so he could have been investigated as far back as 2008). Case investigates 7.6 million euro payment made by Barça management to former referee leader Enriquez Negreira and her son Javier Enríquez Romero for 18 years.
In its summary, the prosecution emphasizes that, although more than 10 years have passed before the prosecution’s complaint is filed in 2023, and moreover, since this complaint has not been addressed to him, these possible crimes will be statute-barred, regardless of the criminal offense involved. Including possible bribery, an issue they have yet to decide on.
For the prosecution, it makes no sense to try the club president for the acts mentioned below, even if they speculate that the crime will continue, as the judge did. So, Sandro Rosell and his successor Josep Maria Bartomeu were also among the defendants. “Laporta can only be held liable for those facts and omissions attributable to him, that is, for those facts and omissions over which the person currently under investigation” could have had control over the action, which was directed to a specific purpose and had full authority to waive that action. ” from action. from performance.
There was no agreement
The application, available to El Periódico de Catalunya from the Prensa Ibérica group, states that there is no option or “mere possibility” of the existence of an agreement between the presidents under investigation and the individuals they constitute. Successive boards of directors of Barça. “At no time was it thought that the different participants acted according to some kind of distribution of roles,” prosecutors said. he states. “Each president, each board of directors, where appropriate, is responsible for payments made to Enríquez Negreira during their time in office; “Payments made by Bartomeu or these cannot be attributed to Rosell. By Laporta”. And even more so considering that there is “not even the slightest indication” that any agreement has been reached between the leaders of FC Barcelona on the payments to the former referee leader or his son.
In their letter, prosecutors emphasize that Barça’s presence is a “common element” and do not add anything to it. “nor does it eliminate the “individual” criminal liability of each of its presidents or the legal classification of the club due to the managers’ “own actions” are also to blame. In the Laporta case, the Criminal Code in force at that time should also be applied to him and the statute of limitations for crimes should be 10 years.
It “does not seem acceptable” that the public ministry considers the prescription attributed to Laporta, who has appealed the charge, to be the last payment made in 2018 to Enríquez Negreira, from whom he left the presidency of the club in the first instance. Prosecutors concluded: “In our case, Laporta ended his presidency on June 30, 2010 , therefore his liability for possible crimes ended 10 years later (July 1, 2020), far from March 2023. The prosecutor’s complaint was accepted.” In the complaint in question, the public accusation no longer escaped Laporta as a defendant due to the statute of limitations for the crime.