'Negreira Case': The judge extends the operation to the former arbitration leadership and confiscates documents from Sánchez Arminio and his team

The Court of Instruction number one of Barcelona ordered to intervene in the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) all the documentation linked to the Negreira case that affected the historic number one of Spanish arbitration, the recently deceased Victoriano Sánchez Arminio, and his main lieutenants. The order of entry and registration in the Technical Committee of Arbitrators (CTA), to which EL MUNDO has had access, authorizes the Judicial Police to confiscate all electronic devices and means of evidence that it considers appropriate to clarify the crimes investigated and extended the mandate to the entire former arbitration leadership.

In this way, the instructor stressed that, in addition to the documentation linked to Sánchez Arminio and his former number two José María Enríquez Negreira, the Civil Guard was authorized to confiscate any document linked to Ángel Franco González, also former vice president of the arbitration group.. Likewise, he extended the order to another veteran leader, the Galician referee José Ángel Medín Prego. The final objective of the judicial intervention is to document the degree of Negreira's influence in the CTA in relation to the promotion and demotion of members or their appointment to prominent parties.

As the Civil Guard pointed out in the report provided in the summary and revealed exclusively by EL MUNDO, Negreira thus had the capacity to considerably improve the remuneration of the members or, on the contrary, lower it.. Along these lines, the Judicial Police maintains that the former number two referee rewarded or punished the referees depending on whether or not they were like-minded and had direct control over the appointments.

This criterion, now shared by the investigating judge himself, completely contradicts that of the current heads of the CTA. Not in vain, the president of the referees, Luis Medina Cantalejo, and the former head of the RFEF, Luis Rubiales, have been maintaining in recent months that Negreira “didn't matter or make any important decisions.”

For his part, Negreira himself admitted his ability to intervene in these matters in the statement he gave to the Tax Agency in October 2019, long before the scandal broke out.

Then, the historic referee leader said that he dedicated himself to “reviewing the reports that the referees make after each game and scoring them.”. In view of which, he added, “the referee could be promoted in category”. He clarified that he did not earn anything for his work at the CTA and that, furthermore, he did not want to receive any remuneration because “he already had his company and was paid by FC Barcelona.”. In fact, he indicated that his main objective was to ensure that Barça's arbitrations were “neutral.”

The Civil Guard drew attention in its latest report on this issue by adding a hitherto unpublished element. He discovered that Negreira forced his son to divert part of the money he received in parallel from FC_Barcelona for arbitration advice. And he highlighted that the concepts by which this transfer of Barça money between son and father was justified had to do precisely with the score of the referees after the League matches.. Therefore, the Armed Institute points out that the circumstance occurred that FC Barcelona ended up paying Negreira for functions that corresponded to him in the CTA.

His appearance before the Treasury was the last time that Negreira gave his version about his million-dollar payments from the Catalan club.. He has recently claimed that he suffers from considerable cognitive impairment that prevents him from giving a statement and the judge has ordered that a forensic examiner examine him to verify if this is true.

When in 2018 he was relieved of his position at CTA and the Barça club stopped paying him, Negreira threatened Barça through two burofaxes revealed by this newspaper in which he recalled that he had been charging in exchange for “favors and confidences” and that if payments stopped, it would unleash a great “scandal.”