Esteban Urreiztieta Madrid

Madrid

Updated Tuesday, March 26, 2024-13:09

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The judge investigating the '

Negreira case

' has agreed to extend the investigation to all the auditors who for almost two decades overlooked payments

from FC Barcelona

to the number two referees. Magistrate Joaquín Aguirre has decided, at the request of the Civil Guard, to extend the investigations to all the club's audit reports corresponding to the years between 2003 and 2018.

The

Armed Institute

has requested the "identification of the auditor of each report" as well as "the basis of the auditor's opinion with qualifications or the basis of the unfavorable opinion, in each case." As a general rule, these accounting analyzes did not alert us to the payment of

almost eight million euros

to José María Enríquez Negreira and only some of these reports, such as the one revealed by EL MUNDO prepared by KPMG after Joan Laporta's first stage as Barça president, were He limited himself to warning that he had shot Negreira's billing without any justification.

The investigators also demand from FC Barcelona "certification of the statement that the auditor has included in each report, confirming that sufficient evidence has been obtained to carry out the audit." To be more exact, Judge Aguirre asks the club to answer

whether the auditors "have had in view the invoices received

from the companies Dasnil 95, Nilsad, Soccercam, Tresep 2014, Radamanto and Best Norton, all of them controlled by Negreira, his son and the deceased former senior Barça official, Josep Contreras. That is, if at the time of carrying out their reports the club communicated the existence of these operations or, on the contrary,

deliberately hid them from them.

Likewise, the investigating judge demands "the description made in each report of the most significant risks of fraud."

The Civil Guard states in one of its latest reports that it already has audits carried out by Kroll, KPMG or Deloitte and that it has received "enormous documentation" from "different entities" such as the Catalan club itself or the Tax Agency.

The judge is investigating, in parallel, the actions of the club's intermediate officials who participated in the payments to the historic referee leader to "prove their authorship" and "determine the natural persons responsible for the crimes under investigation."

At this time, the Court of Investigation number one of Barcelona has the last presidents of Barça, Joan Laporta, Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell, as well as the entity itself and several directors, under investigation. He attributes them to crimes of sports corruption or bribery, among others, in what constitutes the biggest scandal in the history of Spanish football.