The Negreira case controversy continues to hover over FC Barcelona like a dark cloud.
The Blaugrana have been accused of paying over €7 million between 2001 and 2018 to José María Enriquez Negreira, the former vice-president of the Referees’ Technical Committee (CTA) to influence referees.
Barcelona have come out and made it clear that the payments were made in exchange for technical reports on referees and scout reports on young talents in Spain.
Despite there being no actionable evidence, Barça were charged with bribery recently as the matter continues to drag on.
Negreira had no power, claims ex-RFEF president
Several former referees have come out and stated that there is nothing to all the noise surrounding the whole Negreira case.
And now, former RFEF president Ángel María Villar has come out and bluntly stated that Negreira had no power when it came to appointing referees.
“No, he had no power at all. He did not appoint referees. There were two systems, the computer and the trios. And he was neither in one nor the other. He was just one of the eight who were there,” he said, as quoted by SPORT.
“This whole case is very bad for refereeing. I don’t think there is anyone corrupt in refereeing. I don’t believe it about Negreira either, it hasn’t been proved yet,” he further added.
Villar also went on to reveal that he had no idea about the payments Negreira was receiving, as he said:
“If both Victoriano [former CTA president] and I had known about it, Mr. Negreira would not last a second in the Committee. I didn’t know, how am I going to know that he is being paid, I put a detective on him, on all of them?”
