The President of Barcelona Joan Laporta has stated that he would not give La Liga chief executive Javier Tebas “what he’d like by stepping down” as the club’s president.
This is coming in light of the speculations hovering around Barcelona and shady dealings with Referees.
On the 20th of February, 2023, Javier Tebas expressed that Laporta should step down if he couldn’t expatiate payments done by Barcelona to Spanish referee Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira happens to be a former Vice-president of Spain’s referee’s committee and stories have filtered around for some time of how the Blaugrana side made payments to him while he was still in the refereeing committee.
Joan Laporta speaking on Tuesday said “That is for the club’s members to decide.”
Laporta was elected by a large majority of Barcelona club members in March 2021.
And Laporta asserting strongly said “Anyone who tries to tarnish the history and image of Barcelona will receive a strong response.”
The President of Barcelona, Joan Laporta, also stated that Javier Tebas was “obsessed” with the Catalan based giants.
The misconduct around the payments intensified on Tuesday, with eighteen (18) out of the twenty (20) La Liga clubs releasing a communique to show their “deep concern” on the matter.
In the past week, On Wednesday, it was established that Barcelona had made payments to an organization owned by Negreira, an amount reported to be within the region of 1.4m euros between 2016 and 2018.
The amount Barcelona paid and the years!
Following the revelation, it was later put out that Barcelona had paid 77-year-old Negreira about 7 million euros from 2001 and 2018.
2018 was the year that Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira left his responsibilities with the Spanish referees’ committee.
Barcelona are powering their way through to their first La Liga title in four (4) years after going eight-points ahead of Real Madrid, but this current matter has set a dark cloud over their League campaign.
A statement released by La Liga in the interest of the eighteen (18) clubs and also the entire clubs in the Segunda division states:
“The majority of La Liga clubs expressed their deep concern about this case, which they consider to be of the utmost seriousness,”
“The proposal for a joint statement received the unanimous support of all [second division] clubs and all La Liga clubs except for two, who objected to this joint statement for different reasons.
“La Liga and the clubs’ executive committee reject and condemn the facts, and are deeply concerned and actively working to clarify any irregularities that may have occurred around the Negreira case, whether of a sporting or any other nature.”
Who are the whistle blowers in this case Barcelona are embroiled in?
The information was first established by a radio station, Ser Catalunya and it was brought to the front burner following findings conducted by tax authorities into Negreira’s company Dasnil 95.
Barcelona admitted that the club had paid the organization an amount, but it was for “an external technical consultant” to put together video reports connected to professional referees ” with the objective of merging it with the information required by the coaching staff”.
The Blaugrana side also lambasted the time of the revelation, stating that it “regrets that this information has appeared just while the team is enjoying its best moment of the season”.
We all wait and ponder to see where the pendulum of this matter between Barcelona with Joan Laporta and the Chief Executive of La Liga, Javier Tebas would swing.
