Anti-corruption prosecutors Luis María García Cantón and Ricardo Saez Garea appealed to the Barcelona Court against the accusation involving FC Barcelona’s current president, Joan Laporta, in the Negreira case. The timeline centers on Laporta’s exit from the presidency at the end of his first term in June 2010, not in July 2018 as the judge calculated for the latest offense, which would have allowed scrutiny dating back to 2008. The case concerns a 7.6 million euro payment made by Barça management to former referee chief Enriquez Negreira and his son Javier Enríquez Romero, spanning eighteen years.
In its summary, the prosecution notes that more than a decade has elapsed between the events and the filing of the complaint in 2023. Moreover, because the complaint was not initially addressed to Laporta, it raises the possibility that the alleged crimes could be time-barred, regardless of the specific criminal offenses involved, including potential bribery, which remains undecided at this stage.
From the prosecution’s perspective, pursuing the club president for the listed acts would be illogical if the crimes could have lapsed, a point the judge also seemed to consider. The case has drawn earlier defendants as well, including Sandro Rosell and his successor Josep Maria Bartomeu. The prosecutors argued that Laporta could only be held liable for those actions and omissions that he directly controlled or that occurred under his authority, where the action was targeted to a defined purpose and where there was full discretion to waive that action. The argument hinges on whether Laporta had the ability to influence the actions at issue and whether those actions were performed with a clear authority and intent.
There was no agreement
The application surfaced through El Periódico de Catalunya and the Prensa Ibérica group, indicating there was no option or even a “mere possibility” of a formal agreement between the presidents under investigation and the individuals at the center of the case. Barça’s successive boards are described as distinct entities with independent responsibilities. The prosecutors asserted that at no point did they believe the various participants acted under a shared distribution of roles or an overall plan. They argued that each president and each board bears responsibility for payments made to Enríquez Negreira during their tenure, and payments attributed to Bartomeu cannot be ascribed to Rosell or Laporta. This argument gains emphasis from the absence of any clear indication that leaders of Barça conspired on payments to the former referee or his son.
The prosecutors emphasized that Barça’s involvement is a common thread rather than a single, unified plan. They stressed that the case should not erase the individual criminal liability of each president or cast the club itself in a stricter legal category due to the actions of its managers. In Laporta’s situation, the Criminal Code in force at that time should be applied, and the statute of limitations for the relevant crimes would be ten years.
It was deemed unacceptable by the public ministry to apply a prescription date to Laporta based on the last known payment to Enríquez Negreira in 2018, given that Laporta stepped away from the presidency on June 30, 2010. The prosecutors argued that his liability for potential crimes ended ten years later, on July 1, 2020, well before the 2023 complaint that left Laporta as a defendant only by the merits of the statute of limitations for the alleged offenses. The complaint, they argued, should not render Laporta liable when the legal window for these crimes had already closed, and thus the public accusation did not save his status as a defendant at that time. The case continues to be argued on whether the statute of limitations was properly applied and whether new evidence might reopen questions of liability for the former payments or related omissions. The developments illustrate the careful balance courts seek between timely accountability and the protection of statutory deadlines.
Throughout these proceedings, the emphasis remains on whether any attorney or official acted beyond the scope of their lawful authority, and whether the payments served a legitimate club purpose or a private interest cloaked in a formal arrangement. The ongoing discussion underlines the complexity of attributing liability in a multi-era governance scenario where successive leaders faced similar revenue decisions, and it underscores the ongoing public and legal scrutiny surrounding the Negreira matter. The court continues to weigh how the statute of limitations interacts with the specific allegations, and how responsibility is allocated among individuals who led the club over an extended period. Citations: this summary follows reporting from El Periódico de Catalunya with attribution to the Prensa Ibérica group.