Barcelona match delegate Carles Naval is the latest to give his testimony during the Negreira case, where the Catalan giants stand accused of sporting corruption due to payments made to former Vice-President of the Referees Committee (CTA) Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, but have maintained their innocence throughout, claiming the €7-8m in payments were for scouting reports on referees.
The case has been ongoing for the past three years, and is still in the phase of investigation, as they authorities gather evidence from a wide range of integrants. Naval, who has been Barcelona’s delegate since 1986, has testified that he has received said scouting reports since 2014. That is according to Cadena SER, who add that Naval said he had never seen any evidence or insinuation of corruption at Barcelona.
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The authorities initially began to doubt the veracity of the payments due to the amount of money, and then the absence of sufficient reports in the Barcelona archives.
“I asked about the reports on the first invoice from these companies because I hadn’t seen them. My supervisor told me they did, that they had the reports stored in the technical department. From there, I signed off on the first step of approval.”
Continuing on, Naval detailed the operating process for the reception of the scouting reports.
“[Former director Albert] Mr. Soler believes that, instead of having the reports at the stadium, it’s more convenient for the technical staff to have them at the training complex. He would read them and pass them on to the coaching staff.”
It has been suggested by some that deceased director Josep Contreras could have obtained some personal benefit from the payments to the companies owned by Negreira. Naval explained that he was not involved in obtaining them.
“If I remember correctly, the invoices from TRESEP 2014 SL were for player advisory and monitoring services and scouting. The reports were from DASNIL and NILSAD, yes. Mr. Contreras has nothing to do with the reports.”
Naval’s assertion that the reports were handed over to the Barcelona coaching staff directly contradicts the testimony of former Ernesto Valverde and Luis Enrique, who said they were not aware of and did not receive said reports. Others, such as ex-Barca Atletic coach Gerard Lopez, have said they did use the scouting reports made available to them.
