Joan Laporta calls Negreira case a ‘smear campaign’ against Barcelona: ‘The charges must be proven’

John Laporta gave on Monday its most detailed explanations to date on the Negreira case, two months after the revelation of this arbitration controversy. The president of the FCBarcelona opened up to the limelight in a massive appearance to go into depth about a scandal that has shocked football since its revelation, with which he tried to be very blunt: “FC Barcelona have not committed any crime. The Negreira Affair It is not a crime of sports corruption”.

“FC Barcelona has been a model of fair play On and off the field. We won through effort and talent,” Laporta said during his speech. “We like the way we win: winning by playing well. What we don’t like is winning by referee help. Our detractors try to erode our prestige. By desire, feelings or extra-sporting concerns. Sometimes they wanted to make us pay that we were more than a club. They won’t get it. None smear campaign This will prevent Barça from continuing to be a reference club, loved and admired by millions of people around the world.

“When this controversy broke out, I appeared immediately and what I said was that I saw clearly that this was an orchestrated campaign against the prestige and reputation of FC Barcelona. I also said that it was not a coincidence. We commissioned an internal investigation, which at the same time mandated an external office to report with maximum transparency,” he also said.

Laporta insisted that “FC Barcelona has never taken any action with the aim or intention of modifying the competition to obtain a sporting advantage in its favor”. “They couldn’t prove it”, added. “The precise object of the controversy is the technical opinion of arbitration that certain people who have made a career in the world of football and arbitration bodies have given. The fact that Barça had this advice It is not an offence, much less a criminal offence.was another of his qualities.

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The Barça club president reiterated that the invoices due to these controversial reports “were paid by bank transfer, they were recorded in the club’s accounting books”. “There was never a cover up. It was done in a clear and transparent manner,” he says. Laporta placed special emphasis on the “629 reports and 43 DVDs“Collected by Barça” on our preliminary report with our conclusions “.

“Another question would be, and this must be determined during the trial, is that natural persons or a private entity outside the club (not FC Barcelona) would have taken advantage of this context to have or do irregular behavior on their own account. advantage. If this were the case, what we will do is defend the reputation of the club. We understand that in this case, FC Barcelona would be a victim“, wanted to clarify Laporta.

Barca’s top institutional representative believes that “the charges must be proven” and that “this public lynching is not acceptable”, pointing in particular to the president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas: “I would ask you again to stop this verbal incontinence and to stop fueling this controversy. It is to denigrate the competition and it is to validate a hypothesis which is false”.

Laporta’s words were very different for the president of the Spanish Football Federation (Luis Rubiales), that of the CSD (José Manuel Franco) and that of FIFA (Gianni Infantino): “They did not sign for this lynching public without a trial,” he said.