Joan Laporta, the president of Barcelona, has dismissed the claims of bribery made against him in the continuing Negreira case investigations.
Before Judge Joaquin Aguirre Lopez changed his opinion of the statute of limitations for bribery and sports corruption, Joan Laporta was not initially the subject of an investigation.
The judge has decided that the ten years prior to the final incident under investigation—in this case, from 2008 to 2018—should instead be the subject of the ten-year statute of limitations for such accusations, which had previously been focused on the decade preceding the start of the investigation, from March 2013 to March 2023.
Laporta, whose first stint as Barcelona president ran until 2010, is therefore now under investigation and has been charged with bribery.
“I am calm, strong and loaded with arguments,” Laporta told Catalunya Radio. “Today I am speaking again because I do not agree and I believe that the imputation is unfounded.
“We can be calm, this case will be like so many cases that this judge has brought, which have ended up being filed. He says that we have bought referees: it is not true! We knew from his history that it was possible that he would investigate us.”
Laporta went on to blame what he described as “sociological Madridismo” – a universal bias towards Real Madrid – for the continued persecution of his club.
“There is a sociological Madridismo in the centres of power,” he continued. “There is a lot of force. I have competed against this sociological Madridismo and I have won.
“They are afraid that what happened in my first term will happen again. We won a lot and that hurt them a lot. They suffered a lot.
“We are used to fighting against this. This Madridismo is in the media, in the world of sport. We have to accept this as normal but as Cules we have to know that we have to compete against this.
“They are panicking that we will repeat what we have already done, that we will win everything again.”
