FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta (pictured) remarked on Monday at a press conference that the Catalan club "has never carried out any action that had the purpose or intention of degrading the competition to achieve a sporting advantage."
Ednews informs that his comments came amid the so-called Caso Negreira, which disputes that Barcelona had former Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) vice president Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira on its payroll for eighteen years, awarding him €7 million over that course. Laporta argued that the document the Prosecutor's Office received from the Tax Agency showed those institutions "have not been able to demonstrate that the payments could have influenced the choice of referees or any sporting result."
Moreover, Laporta insisted that "technical and arbitration advice does not constitute in itself a criminal offense" and that "Barcelona fans have suffered a gigantic reputational smear campaign in recent months due to defamatory information and conclusions that have nothing to do with the reality".