BARCELONA
Barçagate: Barcelona director Josep Contreras took 50% commission on referee payments
An investigation has confirmed that Barcelona used a shell company owned by their late former director Josep Contreras to make referee payments.
The latest development in the ‘Barçagate’ scandal has tied former Barcelona director Josep Contreras to Jose María Enríquez Negreira, the former vice president of the Royal Spanish Football Federations Referees Committee, whose company received €1.4 million in payments from the club between 2016 and 2018. According to El País, “the investigation carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office has proven that the payments to the son (of Enríquez Negreira) were not made directly but were channeled through Tresep, a shell company owned by the former Barcelona director”. El País states that Contreras, who died in December last year, earned 50% commission on the amount paid by Barça for “coaching services”.
Barcelona paid almost €7 million between 2001 and 2018
The findings of the investigation confirm the link between Barcelona, Dasnil 95 and Tresep, with Enríquez Negreira, his son Javier Enríquez Romero and Contreras at the centre of the story. The investigation, continues El País, confirms that Barça paid almost €7 million to Enríquez Negreira between 2001 and 2018 for “undocumented ‘verbal’ advice which would supposedly ensure ‘neutral’ treatment from referees”.
El País says that, “the investigation into Barcelona’s payments began in May and the Treasury had previously started inspecting Dasnil’s financial activity across three years (2016, 2017 and 2018) due to accounting irregularities and because they had detected unjustified invoices. In 2016, Barça paid €532,728 to Enríquez Negreira’s company, which made a total of €567,136 euros that year, meaning Barça’s payments accounted for almost 94% of its income. Something very similar happened the following year. In 2018, Barça stopped making payments in the month of July, which provoked an angry response from Enríquez Negreira. That year, Barça paid Dasnil €318,200 euros, almost the same amount as their revenue (€329,373). The following year, with its star client gone amid the threat of further financial irregularities being uncovered, Dasnil’s revenue plummeted to €7,348”.