A case that is shaking up Spanish football! This Thursday, the Spanish press via Marca informs that the headquarters of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) located in Las Rozas de Madrid was searched. This action carried out by the Spanish Civil Guard is a continuation of a corruption case linked to José Maria Enriquez Negreira and FC Barcelona. As a reminder, the Catalan club is accused of having paid several million euros to the former referee and vice-president of the CTA of the Spanish Football Federation between 1994 and 2018.
To obtain advice on arbitration matters, the reigning Spanish champion allegedly made several suspicious payments to the company Dasnil 95, which belongs to José Maria Enriquez Negreira. Then, the money payments would have stopped in 2018, the year the former official left his position on the sidelines of the restructuring of the CTA. Subsequently, the latter would then have threatened Barça to reveal the scandal publicly. For his part, the president of FC Barcelona Joan Laporta affirmed last March that his club did not “never bought from a referee”. The Spanish authorities therefore carried out their investigation at the CTA headquarters with the aim of finding documents attesting to the guilt of the former referee and the Catalan leaders.