Spanish football’s longest-running off-pitch storm gathered force again on Thursday as UEFA received a vast submission from Real Madrid in the Negreira case, placing Barcelona’s dealings with a former refereeing official back under the European spotlight.
Real Madrid has provided UEFA with documents reported to run to 50,000 pages. European football’s governing body said its ethics and disciplinary inspectors would assess the material as part of their continuing examination of the file. The Madrid club said it had lodged a complaint against Barcelona and called for the investigation to move forward swiftly, citing evidence it described as exceptionally serious.
Barcelona responded that UEFA had not started a fresh disciplinary case against the club. It added that investigators had neither made new requests to Barcelona nor supplied it with Real Madrid’s complaint, insisting that any action over the new documents would be for UEFA’s investigators to decide.
Payments under Spanish investigation
The case began publicly in February 2023, after an investigation revealed that Spanish authorities were examining payments made by Barcelona to José María Enríquez Negreira, the former vice-president of Spain’s Technical Committee of Referees. Negreira held that position from 1994 until 2018.
A 2022 tax inspection involving Dasnil 95, a company owned by Negreira, identified invoices sent to Barcelona whose justification was considered unclear. The information was passed to prosecutors in Barcelona, leading to a judicial investigation that remains open.
Investigators established that Barcelona paid €7.3 million to companies connected to Negreira and his son Javier between 2001 and 2018. The payments ceased after Negreira left his role within the refereeing body.
Barcelona, prosecuted as a legal entity on allegations of corruption and influence peddling, has maintained that the payments covered consultancy work and technical reports on refereeing. The club has produced 629 reports attributed to Negreira in support of that explanation.
Former Barcelona presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu are among those facing proceedings, alongside former club executives Oscar Grau and Albert Soler. Joan Gaspart and current president Joan Laporta are not being pursued over the 2001-10 period because the relevant allegations are time-barred.
Laporta, questioned as a witness in December 2025, said Barcelona had never needed outside help to achieve its sporting success. He had previously described the affair as an organised attempt to destabilise the club and said he expected an acquittal.
A possible 2027 trial and UEFA risk
Judge Alejandra Gil is close to completing her investigation, which could lead to a trial in 2027. Negreira, now 81 and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, may be unable to take part if the case reaches court. Should convictions follow, the individuals charged could face prison terms of up to four years.
Barcelona cannot be retrospectively punished in domestic sporting competition because the alleged conduct is outside the relevant limitation period, as La Liga president Javier Tebas indicated when the case emerged in 2023. UEFA, however, has a separate route available under regulations allowing exclusion for clubs involved in attempts to fix or influence a match result.
UEFA opened its own disciplinary inquiry in 2023 and said it would wait for the Spanish legal process before making a final decision. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin called the matter extremely serious at the time.
The latest exchange deepens an already bitter institutional feud between Spain’s two biggest clubs. Their senior officials are due to attend a conciliation hearing on 25 November before Barcelona’s defamation action against Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez. During his re-election campaign in May, Pérez accused Barcelona of systemic corruption and alleged that the club had taken trophies from Real Madrid.
