Spanish giants Barcelona have revealed in a statement why they paid a staggering £1.2 million (R26 million) to a refereeing official following a bombshell report this week.
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On Thursday, news outlet Cadena SER released a report detailing how the current LaLiga leaders paid just over £1.2 million to a company owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira over a two-year period.
At the time the transactions were made, between 2016 and 2018, Negreira was vice-president of Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) at the Royal Spanish Football Federation.
The Blaugrana have since issued a press release on their website pertaining to the matter in response to the story.
"FC Barcelona hired in the past the services of an external technical consultant, who supplied, in video format, technical reports referring to players in lower categories of the Spanish State for the Club's technical secretariat," it read.
"Additionally, the relationship with the same external supplier was extended with technical reports related to professional refereeing in order to complement information required by the coaching staff of the first team and the subsidiary, a common practice in professional football clubs.
"Currently, this type of outsourced service falls to a professional attached to the Football Area. FC Barcelona regrets that this information appears precisely at the best sporting moment of the current season.
"FC Barcelona will take legal action against anyone who damages the image of the Club with possible insinuations contrary to the reputation of the entity that may arise as a result of this information."
Negreira, meanwhile, has not denied that he was on Barcelona's payroll, with the Spanish Prosecutor's Office believed to be investigating all parties involved.
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Then-Blaugrana president Josep Maria Bartomeu has since claimed that the payments pre-date his time in charge and that he and his board simply continued the work Joan Laporta started during his first spell as chief between 2003 and 2010.
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