The judge cites Negreira as a defendant after ruling out that he is incapable of testifying

The judge has summoned the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) José María Enríquez Negreira to be declared under investigation for the payments he received from FC Barcelona, ​​after concluding that, despite suffering some memory impairment, he retains the mental faculties to be prosecuted.

In an order, the head of the investigating court number 1 of Barcelona, ​​Joaquín Aguirre, agrees to summon Negreira for next February 21, the first of those investigated for the payments of FC Barcelona who has been called to testify in court, After receiving the report from the forensic experts who examined him to determine if he suffers symptoms of dementia, legal sources have informed EFE.

This examination by the forensic experts of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Catalonia (IMLCF) was commissioned by the magistrate to contrast the report that Negreira’s defense had presented, which alleged that the former referee, 78 years old, suffers from cognitive impairment. which makes him incapable of being able to face criminal proceedings.

The investigating judge commissioned this examination to confirm not only the dementia that Negreira claims to suffer, but also to determine if he will be in a position to be interrogated as an investigator and, in the future, respond to an eventual trial.

Negreira’s defense used a report from the Alzheimer Center of Barcelona – one of the reference centers in the treatment of this degenerative disease – which certifies that the former referee suffers from “mild dementia”, with alterations in memory or language, but remains partially oriented “in time, space and person.”

Once the Prosecutor’s complaint was already in the hands of the court, Daniel Pérez-Esqué, Negreira’s lawyer, presented another document before the investigating magistrate in which he reiterated the former student’s incapacity situation, referring to the Alzheimer Center report.

The former vice president of the CTA underwent a first forensic examination on October 10, when he suffered a fall in front of the press cameras at the moment when he was preparing to enter the headquarters of the Legal Institute, accompanied by his wife.

Subsequently, the magistrate asked the IMLCF for an expansion of its forensic report to determine the extent of the memory impairment that Negreira alleges, which forced him to undergo a second medical examination.

Others investigated in the Negreira case

In addition to Enríquez Negreira, the president of the FCB, Joan Laporta, and his predecessors in office Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bertomeu, as well as other former directors of the Barça club and the son of the former vice president of the CTA, are being investigated in the case over Barça payments. , Javier Enriquez.

Last September, the instructor issued an order in which he agreed to charge those accused in the “Negreira case” with a crime of bribery, which thus adds to those of corruption between individuals in the sports field, disloyal administration, falsehood in commercial document and money laundering that until now were attributed to them.

The judge suspects that FC Barcelona’s payments to the former referee and his son – nearly 7 million euros between 2001 and 2018 – could have been due to a “novel form of possible illegitimate remuneration for football referees”, in a context of a “possible systemic corruption within the CTA” at the time when Negreira was vice president of this organization. With EFE

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