1676657584 Enriquez Negreira has threatened to break his loyalty to all

Enríquez Negreira has threatened to break his “loyalty” to “all the presidents” of Barça if the club doesn’t pay him €260,000

Enriquez Negreira has threatened to break his loyalty to all

Former referee José María Enríquez Negreira received around seven million euros from FC Barcelona for alleged “oral advice”, of which there is no trace. It didn’t seem like enough. When Barça shut down the tap in July 2018 and decided to forego his supposed accomplishments, they reacted angrily. In a letter to then-President Josep Maria Bartomeu, to which EL PAÍS has access, his lawyer demanded immediate payment of the 267,000 euros that, according to his criteria, were outstanding for the remaining months of the year.

Enríquez Negreira’s anger was reflected in an office fax in January 2019. Dasnil, the company he used to bill the club, hadn’t taken the insinuation when Barça informed him in July that they would no longer pay him. “They tell me that we won’t need your services this season and therefore we shouldn’t be billed,” the finance department wrote to a Dasnil employee. In the office fax, the lawyer considers that these “comments”, addressed to a “secretary” of Enríquez Negreira, were not enough. “This rumor of something that is being talked about, but it is not firm or definitive, it is far from being understood as a formal communication.” The letter adds that the Barca president has expressed his reservations: “Bartomeu told Mr. Enríquez not to heed this comment and that no formal decision had been made.”

In the previous two seasons, Dasnil had earned over half a million each year. In 2018, on the other hand, the amount that appears in the company’s books – analyzed by the tax authority, which detected irregularities in the invoices during this period – is 318,200 euros because it only goes up to the month of July. In the letter, the lawyer requests payment of the outstanding amount to a specific account: “We would like to point out again that you have to pay the amount owed of 267,047 euros.”

This first letter already contains a veiled threat: if Barça does not pay, Enríquez Negreira will “feel relieved of any duty of loyalty and/or confidentiality towards FC Barcelona and, in particular, towards all the presidents with whom he has dealt Mr. Bartomeu”. The letter urged the club to “do an exercise in healthy criticism and reflection” and pay what they felt they owed.

FC Barcelona replied that the commercial relationship had been “ineffective” since July, leading to a second office fax, this time signed by the former collegiate himself, in which the warnings were clearer. The text, put forward by El Mundo yesterday, threatens to expose alleged irregularities that Enríquez Negreira would have learned about over the years of contact with the club. “I don’t think another scandal will help the club.”

The seven million left Barça without a valid reason and without a known destination, according to the case opened by the prosecutor regarding the club’s payments to Enríquez Negreira. The inquiry concludes that there is no indication that the company Dasnil, owned by the former referee, has actually “orally advised” the club since at least 2001. but not you have not attached any documentation proving the reality of the works, if they have been carried out.

At least since Joan Gaspart’s presidency, the various Barça boards have allocated budget items that exceed €380,000 a year on average, although the cost of this alleged service has increased in the 2009-2010 season with Joan Laporta as president. After an inspection by Dasnil’s tax authority uncovered payments of 1.4 million between 2016 and 2018, the investigation has attempted to solve the mystery: why did the club contract out such sums to consulting firms? According to Enríquez Negreira’s statement before the Treasury, Barça wanted to ensure “neutral” arbitration procedures that would not harm them.

However, the investigation has not allowed any progress in this direction, since the former referee himself remained silent when appearing as an investigating officer before the prosecutor’s office. Barça provided a copy of the reports and a DVD on referees made by the former manager’s son, Javier Enríquez, who researched referee behavior on the pitch and provided the club with the material. However, these payments differ from those received by Enríquez Negreira and, according to sources, since they are documented, they have in principle no criminal relevance in the case.

The other big unknown that hasn’t been solved is what Enríquez Negreira did with that money. The tax authority has not proved that the generous bills resulted in an increase in their movable assets (boats, luxury cars) or real estate. The investigation, which began in May 2022, has been tracking Enríquez Negreira’s checking accounts to see if any transfers to accounts held by other companies or individuals have been recorded. The result was negative. It was proven that a large part of the money brought in by Dasnil – Barça was practically the only source of income for the company – was withdrawn in cash by Enríquez Negreira himself and other people he trusted. Since the events go back in time and will in any case end in 2018 (when Barça terminates the contract with Dasnil), it was not possible to take investigative measures that would allow us to go further.

Bartomeu denied ‘favorable treatment’

At least for the moment there is no indication that the money was used to, for example, deliver it to certain referees so that they were cheap for Barça in the games. In his testimony before the prosecutor, Bartomeu denied that the club had been “favored” by the referees. And he gave the example of the last league game of the 2013/14 season, when Barça played with Atlético de Madrid for the title and the referee disallowed a goal by Messi that could have been decisive. “If I’ve ever had a refereeing problem, I’ve always spoken to him about it [Ángel María]Villar or with [Luis] rubiale [expresidente y presidente de la Real Federación Española de Fútbol] And if necessary, he would leave with a video of the controversial pieces,” Bartomeu added in an interview with this newspaper. The former president was also asked by the public prosecutor’s office about the amount already paid for the videos of sports coach Javier Enríquez. He replied that the club saved money once he took on those services.

It was Bartomeu’s board of directors who severed ties with Dasnil in July 2018. According to the version of the former president, the management of sports suggested this in order to save costs and informed the company about this. After a few days, Enríquez Negreira called Bartomeu: “He told me that he was very angry and that what we had done seemed very bad to him,” Bartomeu explained in a telephone conversation. It was then, always according to his version, that he realized that Javier Enríquez, the man who sent weekly referee reports to the club, was the former referee leader’s son. “I was very confident that whoever we hired was the son,” he says. Bartomeu confirms that he knew Enríquez Negreira from his visits to the Spanish FA headquarters. “He never told me his son worked for us and he never asked me or we had a meeting.”

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