Barçagate: Will the European football giant face punishment after corruption scandal?

International sports media did not hesitate to compare 'Barcagate' with the match fixing scanadal that plagued Juventus in 2006, resulting in the relegation of the Italian side. And with good reason, we are talking here about million-dollar payments from by FC Barcelona to the director of the Spanish referee committee.

What is of particular concern is that the ordinary courts and the Spanish Tax Agency uncovered one of the biggest corruption scandals in the history of sports, though both Spanish and European football institutions failed to detect any irregularities.

The scandal was uncovered by an investigation conducted by the Spanish Treasury, where a company belonging to the former vice president of the Spanish referring committee (CTA), José María Enríquez Negreira, was receiving payments from the Catalan club.

The investigation found that FC Barcelona allegedly paid millions of dollars in transactions to Enríquez Negreira's company right around the same time he was involved in the administrative board of referees in Spain.

Photo: Unsplash - Vardan Papikyan

What was initially estimated at almost 1.5 million euros ($1.6m US) paid during the 2016-2018 seasons, El Mundo estimated a higher figure, somewhere around 6.6 million euros since 2001.

According to the investigation, there were 33 invoices that Barça would have paid to the vice president. The objective behind Barcelona's payments was "so no biased arbitration would influence the club's outcomes, keeping everything neutral".

When the Spanish Tax Agency requested the documents for a full investigation, FC Barcelona highlighted the fact that there was a lot of "verbal advice" and verbal agreements.

Photo: Pexels - Mart Production

The payments would have started in the 2001/2002 season, with Joan Gaspart as president of FC Barcelona, and in 2009/2010 they increased in amount with Joan Laporta as president, according to the newspaper El Mundo.

The payments would have been maintained until the aforementioned 2018 season when José María Enríquez Negreira left his position at the CTA.

Meanwhile, on the field, FC Barcelona went more than two years without receiving a penalty in the Spanish league. This two year period happened to fall between February 2016 and March 2018.

As of now, the investigation is in the hands of the Spanish judicial system, while sporting institutions like UEFA await for more information regarding the scandal.

Javier Tebas, president of the Spanish League, announced the alleged crime occurred in 2018 and much has happened since then. There is only a three-year margin for series offenses like this. However, this does not rule out other means of applying sanctions, if appropriate.

When comparing this scandal to that of Juventus in the 2000s, where the Italian club faced a 30-point deduction for alleged match-fixing, one can see many parallels. The Italian League also banned Juventus from any transfers alongside the removal of key titles.

UEFA and FIFA are observing attentively from the sidelines but are seemingly unmoved by the scandal as there seems to be very little interest in sanctioning Barcelona.

The aforementioned medium ensures that with this sanction, the two big sports organizations are also hoping to deal a fatal blow to the Super League – the new proposed European football competition featuring Barça and other football giants, which has become UEFA's direct competitor.

Meanwhile, FC Barcelona has denied everything, but the data now in the hands of the Tax Agency give Barcelona no wiggle room.

On the other hand, clubs like Sevilla or Espanyol have already publicly requested that the investigation be carried out to the end and that it should have all the pertinent consequences.

Real Madrid is prudently silent, waiting to see how these events unfold. 'Los Blancos' attentively watch their arch-rivals as they maneuver in and out of one of the most controversial referring scandals in the Spanish League.