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LaLiga president Javier Tebas said he does not believe Real Madrid are responsible for the damaging case involving Barcelona and ex-Spanish refereeing committee (CTA) vice president Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
Enriquez Negreira is being investigated by the Spanish prosecutor’s office for receiving payments from Barcelona between 2016 and 2018 for consultancy work, which included refereeing reports, while he was still vice-president of the CTA.
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Barca president Joan Laporta hinted the story may have been leaked to damage Barca, with the club eight points clear at the top of LaLiga.
However, speaking on the incident, Tebas said he wants a full investigation and denies any conspiracy theories involving Barca’s Clasico rivals.
“There are a series of payments, for amounts that are not clear,” Tebas said. “I don’t know if it has affected the results of the matches or not, but as president of LaLiga, I don’t like it.
“This is very surprising but very serious. It is doing a lot of damage to Spanish football. It is not by chance that information of this type comes out when Barcelona is doing well, it is not by chance.
“It’s not a conspiracy. Another thing is the media noise, who put more meat on the grill. Behind it all there is no conspiracy from Real Madrid, the facts are in the Prosecutor’s Office.
“If it reaches a [legal] court, LaLiga will be there as a part of the case to find out what has happened, whether Barca has been ripped off or if it has interfered so that it has consequences.”
Ex-Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu told ESPN on Friday that Negreira tried to extort money from the Catalan club in 2018 after it stopped making payments to his company.
There have been accusations that Barca gained advantages on the pitch, yet Bartomeu said that was not the case and that having technical reports about professional refereeing was commonplace in football.
Tebas said earlier in the week that Barca would not face sporting sanctions over the Negreira revelations because statute of limitations laws in Spain only make it possible to punish clubs within three years of any offences.
According to El Mundo newspaper, Barca paid a total of €6.65m without tax to Negreira’s company, with payments dating back to 2001 when Joan Gaspart was Barca president.
The revelations have been unsettling in Spain.
Augusto Cesar Lendoiro, who presided over Deportivo La Coruna from 1988 until 2014, described it as “an unprecedented scandal.”
“I think it’s the worst news in the history for Spanish football, not just for Barcelona, due to the real global impact it has had,” he said.
“When the exact date of the beginning of the million-dealing professional relationship between Enriquez Negreira and Barcelona is known, there will be many clubs and fans, Deportivo and I the first, who will remember those games against Barca.
“Those that we all have in memory, in which we complained extremely harshly about the referee on duty, but then we only related it to the so ‘accepted’ thing about ‘referees always helping the big teams.'”
Barca coach Xavi Hernandez did not refer to the Negreira case in Saturday’s news conference.
“We are focusing on our work, which is to do our best against Cadiz,” he said. “We have not spoken as a group about that.
“All we spoke about was Cadiz, it was all about Cadiz. It’s an important game for us.
“Of course I would be disappointed if we lost LaLiga. There are still many games left to play. It’s all in our hands but we have to go out and get it.”