I wrote it in the other Barca thread instead of this one so I will copy it here too:
Looks like the prosecution will ask Laporta, Gaspart, Ernesto Valverde and Luis Enrique to testify
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There is a very new and interesting article regarding this scandal:
The 'justification' of the former presidents of Barça for the 'Negreira Case': ''We were paying in self-defense''.
The executives under investigation, in private conversations, say they hired the former VP of referees to compensate for the favors received by Real Madrid
"We paid in self-defense". It is one of the confidences made by the former presidents and former executives of Barcelona investigated in the Negreira case. Both Rosell and Bartomeu maintained the payments to the former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), initiated in the Núñez era and maintained by Joan Laporta, convinced that there was a tendency to favor Real Madrid in the referee's office.
The leaders, always in private conversations, maintain that they hid these payments from their directors and a good part of their executives "to protect them". Not in vain, this has been the argument that some of Barcelona's former top officials have received in recent weeks when asking for explanations for the systematized payments to the former number two of the refereeing staff. Sources from the former management teams added to EL MUNDO that if they did not break with José María Enríquez Negreira earlier, it was because he maintained a permanent blackmail on the club with false accusations and they did not want it to lead to a big public scandal.
This version coincides with those made to the Tax Agency by the former referee, who said that Barça wanted to guarantee "neutrality" in the arbitrations. Other executives now under investigation, such as Albert Soler, stated that they only knew of the club's relationship with Javier Negreira, son of the former vice-president of the CTA, who made reports on the rival teams and the referees appointed on a weekly basis.
Negreira Jr. would prepare studies for the first team and the reserve team. They arrived in an envelope or he took them personally to the club's offices, from where they were forwarded to the coaches of both teams. These envelopes were identified with the letters A and B in reference to the matches of the different categories.
Negreira Jr. was paid through a company of the former manager Josep Contreras, deceased, an irregularity detected by the Tax Agency, although according to sources close to the case, he would have paid off his tax debt. Negreira Jr. has blamed his father for harming him in his soccer career. "He has ruined my life," he explained to people around him while stressing that he "did not know" what his father was doing.
Although the first trace of the relationship between Negreira and Barcelona is an invoice of 2001, everything indicates that this one began in the stage of José Luis Núñez. Nuñismo ended with the departure of Joan Gaspart and the arrival of Laporta as president in 2003. In doing so, the new president, who had been at odds with Núñez and Gaspart since the days of opposition in the Elefant Blau, said he would "lift the rugs". But after the victory, Gaspart would end up becoming an ally. The reason was his weight in the Federation presided over by Ángel María Villar. A year after Laporta's triumph, the two met at the Avenida Palace Hotel in Barcelona. They talked for hours and spoke of the need not to lose weight in the Federation, where Negreira was vice-president of the CTA. That same year, in 2004, Gaspart was appointed vice-president of institutional and international affairs of the Federation.
When Villar faced the schism due to the departure of secretary general Gerardo González, his future electoral rival, Laporta knew which side he should be on, unlike Florentino Pérez and Javier Tebas, then united. It was the winning side. From the environment of the former presidents, they also insist that payments such as those made to Negreira "have been made by other teams in the First and Second Division". Therefore, they complain that they are only acting against the azulgrana entity for a conduct that, they argue without providing evidence, is widespread in Spanish soccer.
On the other hand, the High Council of Sports (CSD) and the RFEF will appear, as will Real Madrid, in the summary of the Negreira case.
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This would contradict Laporta's initial declaration that they paid exclusively for reports.
This would also prove that they indeed tried to influence the refereering.
Also the fact that the High Council of Sports (CSD) will participate is pretty important, at least symbolically. Miquel Iceta, actual minister of culture and sports, had previously said that the Spanish Government would be forced to participate in this case, and they are doing so through the CSD, his president declared: "this case worries me. A club does not pay the ref VP for nothing"
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