Negreira case: Judge rejects Real Madrid’s request to access Barcelona’s accounts

Relations between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid have hit an all-time low, with Los Blancos doing everything to drag out the Negreira case in recent months.

The lawyer representing Real Madrid posed several questions to Barça president Joan Laporta during his testimony in court.

Not stopping at that, Los Blancos formally requested access to documents and records relating to the payments made by Barcelona between 2010 and 2018 to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.

Request rejected by Judge

However, as reported by AS, the Barcelona Court of Instruction number 1, which is investigating the Negreira case, has rejected Real Madrid’s request to have access to the Catalans’ audits and economic reports.

The Spanish capital club had requested access to this documentation in its capacity as a private prosecutor in the case. However, their request has been turned down.

In doing so, Judge Alejandra Gil Lima has sided with one of the individuals under investigation, ex-Barça president Josep Bartomeu, who opposed the court handing over the information to Real Madrid on the grounds that the club “lacked procedural standing”.

Real Madrid are dragging the Negreira case. (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)

In her ruling, the judge states that the requested economic reports “are not necessary” given that:

“There are indications that the payments to those natural and legal persons were indeed made (invoices exist, and even the payer, FCB, admit them – what it does not admit is that they were made with the intention of obtaining favourable treatment in sporting competition)”.

She also argues that the requested financial documentation “will contain information that is irrelevant for the purposes of the present investigation, since it is not limited to specifying the payments made to the companies or persons linked to Mr Enríquez Negreira, but instead seeks reports referring to the entire economic management of FC Barcelona between 2010 and 2021, which has no relevance to the present investigation”.

For the same reason, the ruling also states that there are no grounds to require the club to submit internal and external audit reports on its financial statements for the financial years between 2010 and 2018.

Judge Gil Lima has also rejected the request for FC Barcelona to provide the minutes of the Tax Governance committee meetings in which the payments to Enríquez Negreira were analysed from a fiscal perspective.

“The analysis of the payments that concern us here from a tax point of view is alien to the object of the present investigation,” she argues.