Spanish Public Prosecutor has indicted Barcelona officially. The charge is for payments made to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
Negreira was the vice president of the Spanish football refereeing committee, a position he held between 1994-2018.
Barcelona was charged as an entity. However, their former Presidents, Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell, have also been charged as individuals.
According to reports from the Athletic, the Spanish public prosecutor’s office has charged Barcelona with a crime of continued corruption in business.
The prosecutors accused Barcelona of paying Negreira for favourable refereeing decisions. This is a crime according to a Spanish law that explicitly targets corruption in sports.
The law incriminates any attempt to “pre-determine or alter deliberately or fraudulently the result of a match or competition.”
The individuals in the case, two Barcelona presidents, Sandro Rosell and Bartomeu, who served as presidents from 2010-2014 and 2014-2020, respectively, along with two former officials, Oscar Grau and Albert Soler, have also been charged.
A severe penalty awaits if found guilty, as the continuous nature of the alleged crime warrants a more significant punishment than for one-off cases.
Professional disqualification and fines are possible punishments for Barcelona as a football club. However, for the indicted individuals, a prison sentence of up to four years is a possibility
