Madrid (EFE)
To this end, it issued a decree on Tuesday establishing that the jurisdiction to hear the facts that are the subject of Preliminary Proceedings 348/23 of the Examining Court No. 1 of Barcelona passes to the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Corruption and Organized Crime, as these are crimes related to corruption of special importance.
According to the complaint already filed by the Barcelona Provincial Prosecutor’s Office, the facts denounced could constitute a continuous crime of corruption in business in the sports field, a continuous crime of unfair administration or a continuous crime of misappropriation, as well as a crime continuation of falsehood in commercial document.
From now on, it will be this Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office that leads the investigation of the case.
The Prosecutor’s Office has denounced FC Barcelona and its former presidents Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell for these events and has proposed that the current president of Barça, Joan Laporta, be summoned as a witness.
The complaint was filed before the investigating court number 1 of Barcelona so that it accumulates to the previous proceedings initiated as a result of a complaint filed by the VAR referee Estrada Fernández against Negreira.
In addition to Rosell -who was president of FC Barcelona between 2010 and 2014- and Bartomeu -between 2014 and 2020-, the complaint is directed against the former executive director of the club Oscar Grau and the former director of Professional Sports Albert Soler, who were ” of the highest confidence” Bartomeu, according to the public ministry.
The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that, through the presidents Rosell and Bartomeu, the Barça club “reached and maintained” a “strictly confidential verbal agreement” with the then vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) José María Enríquez Negreira so that, “at money exchange”, carry out “actions tending to favor FC Barcelona in the decision-making of the referees in the matches they play” and in the “results of the competitions”.