EFE: 'There is no evidence Barca fixed the match'

The EFE said it had seen a report from Spain's finance ministry on the investigation of the "suspicious Negreira". The Spanish prosecutor's office confirmed that Negreira received a sum of 7.5 million euros ($8.1 million) from Barca without any economic benefit.

According to the results of an investigation by the Spanish Ministry of Finance more than a year ago, they found no evidence that Negreira influenced the results of Barca's matches. However, the Prosecutor's Office is still trying to prove Barca and Negreira guilty. And the results of the investigation by the Ministry of Finance are not related to the court's decision.

Barca and Negreira face the risk of being convicted of corruption, in sports, unfair management or forging commercial documents. Court No. 1 in Barcelona on March 15 confirmed that it had accepted the complaint of the Prosecutor's Office.

Under Presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, Barca reached a strictly confidential oral agreement with referee Negreira, when he was still Vice President of the Spanish Arbitration Council (CTA). The prosecutor's office alleges that Barca paid millions of dollars to make the referee's decisions in favor of the team. Between 2001 and 2018, Barca paid a total of €7.5 million to Negreira's company.

In addition to Rosell and Bartomeu, former Barca sporting director Oscar Grau and sports politician Albert Soler were also accused.

Negreira served as a referee in Spain from 1975-1992. Two years later, he worked as Vice President of CTA until he retired in 2018. The payment Barca paid to Negreira also stopped when he retired. The CTA has powers such as classifying referees based on skill, transferring referees between tournaments and assigning referees to do match-by-match duties.

EFE is considered a news agency based in Madrid, consisting of 3,000 reporters from 60 countries. They have three other offices in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Bogota (Colombia) and Cairo (Egypt).