Laporta: 'La Liga president wants me to resign'

In a press conference on February 21, Laporta said that the payments Barca paid to former referee Enrique Negreira in the 2003-2010 period included invoices, video evidence, and photos of the services provided by the company DASNIL. Barca has outsourced a private law firm to investigate this case.

"Neither the prosecutor's office nor the police say that Barca is under investigation," Laporta said. "But we have hired an outside company to thoroughly investigate this case, and I will hold another press conference to provide information."

At the same time, La Liga made an announcement with the consent of 18 clubs in the tournament, except Barca and Real Madrid, saying that the Negreira case was "particularly serious", and they were "deeply concerned, with the desire to investigate". clarify any unusual issues surrounding this case."

When asked about the move of La Liga and President Javier Tebas, Mr. Laporta replied: "It seems Tebas is promoting a campaign against Barca and me. He finally took off his mask. Tebas is obsessed. Barca, when he was Vice President of Alaves in 2005, he tried to ban Lionel Messi from playing for us. He still hates us because we refused to sign an investment agreement from the CVC fund. function according to Tebas' wishes".

Laporta was the president of Barca for the first time from 2003-2010. According to the Spanish newspaper EPE, the amount Barca paid Negreira's company DASNIL was 145,758 euros (about 155,000 USD) in the 2003-2004 season. By the 2009-2010 season, this amount increased to 573,398 euros. They only paid Negreira 7,384 euros in 2019 under Josep Maria Bartomeu, and then stopped. The total amount Barca paid to Negreira since 2001 amounted to 6.66 million euros (about 7.09 million USD).

Negreira is a former La Liga referee, then vice-president of the Spanish Arbitration Council from 1994 to 2018. Barca stopped paying DASNIL in 2019, when he retired. The Barcelona prosecutor's office is investigating Negreira, but he did not appear in court because of dementia. The lawyer has submitted medical evidence proving that he has the disease since 2018.

Particularly for the period 2015-2018 under Bartomeu, Barca paid $ 1.6 million for DASNIL. Bartomeu explained that it was a fee to advise players on how to behave with referees, and that he did not know Negreira owned the company. Laporta returns to replace Bartomeu in 2021, being accused by his predecessor of having quadrupled Negreira's salary.