Real Madrid has reopened the "Negreira Case", regarding the investigation of payments made by FC Barcelona to José María Enríquez Negreira, the former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (who is now 80 and has dementia), approximately €8.4 million made between 2001 and 2018.
The suspicions of sporting fraud, in the case the club was secretly paying one of the heads of the referees in Spain, has marked the relationship between the clubs since the case broke in 2023, and now Real Madrid says they are sending UEFA a written statement, claiming there are significant evidence that conclusively reinforces the indications already known since the beginning regarding the existence of prolonged, opaque payments lacking any verifiable justification".
The club claims that these facts constitute "a systemic risk of utmost severity for the integrity of competitions, as they reveal the existence of a structure of undue influence over the refereeing body, incompatible with the essential principles of competitive equality, neutrality, impartiality, and unpredictability of sports outcomes."
Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez previously announced, in a press conference last May, that the report they would send to UEFA was over 500 pages long, and described the Negreira case as "the worst case of corruption in the history of sports".
The intention is that UEFA must resume the disciplinary proceeding previously initiated, "adopt the appropriate disciplinary and restorative measures" against FC Barcelona, "independently of the ongoing judicial proceedings".
