A witness saw Bartomeu in Negreira’s company offices

Every day is a new chapter in the book on the Negreira Case. Today, it’s the turn of El Confidencial, who have published the words of a witness who claims to have seen the ex-Barça president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, in the office of José Enríquez Negreira’s company building. The secretary of the ex-referee offered concrete details to the Prosecutor’s Office regarding the professional connexion that her boss had with FC Barcelona and, in particular, the presidents.

In a declaration made to the police, Concepción Díaz, an employee of Negreira for over 20 years, explained that the way Negreira was able to charge FC Barcelona €7.5 million came from his “personal relationship” with the various club presidents. “Mr Bartomeu was, on one occasion, in the office talking about football”, she said. Bartomeu, for his part, denies ever personally meeting Negreira.

Díaz sacked after Barça cut ties

Díaz, as the only employee of the company (Dasnil) to which the majority of the payments were made, knew the structure inside out. El Confidencial says that Díaz was sacked when the relationship with FC Barcelona came to and end. “The company stopped having FC Barcelona as a client and the income went down by at least 70%”, she explained, saying that in her sacking notice this was given as the reason behind her dismissal. She had worked with the ex-vice president of the Referee Committee (CTA) since 1995.

Bartomeu stopped returning Negreira’s calls

The secretary did not know what these payments, that happened for years, were for. She explained that the last invoice the club paid was in the month of June of 2018, “pretty much the same month [Negreira] stopped working as the vice president of the CTA... the bill corresponding to the month of July of the same year was returned to them with an email that said it was rejected, since they were cutting ties with the company’s services. She also said that Negreira tried to contact Bartomeu, but he never returned the calls.

Díaz was limited to invoicing what Negreira said to and then telling FC Barcelona via email to which account the money was to be sent to. She only worked with invoices, never any other type of documents or archives. “On any occasion did you see Mr Enríquez Negreira work on any reports or disc recording?”, asked the agents. “No”, was her response. She could not explain the millions of euros put into the account by her boss and she went back to calling it “a personal relationship with the president that was there in whatever moment”.