FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta continues to insist that his club is not guilty of bribery. On Sunday, the Spaniard gave an interview about the lawsuit that is currently ongoing and Laporta continues to insist that his club has done nothing wrong. At the moment, UEFA and Spanish authorities are investigating an alleged bribery scandal in Spanish football.
For example, Barcelona would have paid an amount of up to €7.5 million to a company owned by the Spanish technical committee of referees over a nearly 20-year period. Barcelona maintain that the payments were to obtain scouting reports from referees, but to date cannot explain why the payments suddenly stopped when the referee boss decided to resign.
Barcelona have denied all allegations, with club president Joan Laporta being especially vocal about his side’s lack of wrongdoing. “They have nothing because there is nothing. Here what they have done is magnify a situation in which one of the people who was linked to these companies was a former referee and a former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees. [Negreira] had no capacity to alter the results of any match because he did not designate the referees.”
