FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta has been called as a witness in the trial regarding the Negreira case, the payment of around 7,3 million euros made by the club to José María Enríquez Negreira, formerly vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) of the Spanish Football Federation, as well as his son Javier. The payments were made between 2001 and 2018, and the club is under suspicion of receiving favourable treatment from referees as a result of the payments.
In the hearing, Laporta denied that the club received any favourable treatment from the referees, and said that these payments to Negreira were "inherited" by the previous administration of the club. Laporta and the club have maintained that those payments were made in exchange of technical reports on refereeing and players scouting that were "useful" and "could be of interest to the club", and denied any accusations of bribing.
It is the same explanation made by former Barça presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, who said in their testimonies as defendants back in September that the payments were made for reports on players that were "useful from a sporting perspective".
Laporta added today that all documents about the payments made to Negreira family have been shared, but these types of documents are destroyed every five or six years. He claimed that "not at all" they have received favourtable treatment from the club, and their team was "exemplary" to the rest of the world.
Joan Laporta was exonerated because the crime had expired
Laporta was initially charged by the judge, but was exonerated because the payments made by the club during his first stint at the club, between 2003 and 2010, had passed the statute of limitations. Laporta was reelected as FC Barcelona president in 2021 and the payments were made between 2001 and 2018.
The judge will call FC Barcelona as a defendant on January 27. The club will be represented by vice president Elena Fort. Former Barcelona president Joan Gaspart (between 2000 and 2003) will also be summoned, but only as a witness for the same reason as Laporta: the crime had expired.