Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, assured this Tuesday that the body he presides over also will be presented as a private prosecution in the ‘Negreira case’and explained that “Spanish football needs clarity“after noting that”the reputation of this competition is above and it doesn’t matter which club it is”.
Thebes announced the performance of La Liga after confirming that the Prosecutor’s Office will present a complaint against the former president of Barcelona Josep Maria Bartomeu and against the club itselffor the millionaire payments to the former referee José María Enríquez Negreira, who went to Barça for the last time in 2020 to offer them their services again and “help them with the VAR”.
“Very sad, you have to investigate. It is necessary to know if there was influence or not. Because the influence can be direct or indirect. But it is open to investigation. Only the intention of trying to buy a game or vary the result. Simply act thinking that you could change the intention of the referees, even a designation can be a crime“, explained the maximum mandator of La Liga.
Tebas also revealed that La Liga reported the matter to UEFA 48 hours after it was made public: “Since we could not intervene because it had prescribed, we wrote to UEFAsomething that other institutions did not do”. Likewise, he recalled that the UEFA statutes provide for the power to intervene at the international level when the national institutions cannot do so.
The president of La Liga insisted that he wants this matter to be clarified and that “there is no campaign to discredit Barcelona“, incidentally rejecting the idea, suggested by Laporta, that he has an interest in the club becoming a Public Limited Company: “In the Spanish League we are the ones who fight against the state clubs. We don’t have a mania for Barça, Laporta and his managers know it “.
He also maintained that “the dispute with the Premier comes from behind, with the issue of financial fairplay“, in response to the statements by the president of the Spanish Football Federation (REF), Luis Rubiales, in which he considered it a “chance” that this news came out when the Spanish league was being compared with the English one.
The Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office will denounce Barcelona as a legal person, Enríquez Negreira, the former president of the club, Josep María Bartomeu and the former directors Albert Soler and Óscar Grau for the crimes of corruption in business, unfair administration and falsehood, after the payments made between 2001 and 2018 for alleged arbitration advice.
