Spanish giant Barcelona FC has been accused of paying a company owned by a former refereeing chief a total sum of $6.9 million in a supposed match-buying transaction.
Report said, the criminal misdemeanours happened between 2001and 2018 during the times of Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell as President.
It named the former referee chief as Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
The trio are facing same charge levelled at them by Spanish prosecutors on Friday.
The allegation is in respect of alleged payments Barcelona made to Negreira, the former refereeing technical committee vice-president, for providing the club with verbal advice on topics relating to referees.
Interestingly, the charge is coming on the heels of current Barca boss Joan Laporta’s insistence that Barcelona had never “bought referees.”
“Let it be clear Barca have never bought referees and Barca have never had the intention of buying referees, absolutely never,” Laporta remarked on Tuesday.
