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Spanish prosecutors have charged Barcelona club president Joan Laporta with bribery in relation to the Negreira scandal.
Barcelona were levelled with charges of ‘active bribery’ in September regarding payments of €7.7m made to a company linked to referee official Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, who is alleged to have provided the club with intricate information about referees from 2001 to 2018.
These charges have now extended to Laporta, who is facing action alongside former Barca presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu.
The statute of limitation for bribery in Spain is usually set at 10 years for bribery cases, but judge Joaquin Aguirre Lopez has declared on this occasion that this period should instead be extended to 15 years instead, which enters Laporta’s previous spell as club president between 2003 and 2010.
Laporta and the six others charged by prosecutors deny wrongdoing, but if found guilty they could be jailed for a period between three and six years, while Barcelona would almost certainly face suspensions from La Liga and UEFA competitions.
