Joan Laporta hits back at bribery allegations in Negreira case
- Laporta was not initially under investigation in the Negreira case
- Judge changed interpretation of statute of limitations, affecting Laporta
- Barcelona president has denied all wrongdoing
By Tom Gott
Barcelona president Joan Laporta has brushed off allegations of bribery against him in the ongoing investigations into the Negreira case.
Laporta was not initially under investigation until judge Joaquin Aguirre Lopez adjusted his interpretation of the statute of limitations for bribery and sports corruption.
The statute of limitations for such accusations is ten years and had been focused on the decade leading up to the beginning of the investigation - March 2013 to March 2023 - but the judge has ruled that it should in fact relate to the ten years prior to the final incident under investigation which, in this case, is from 2008 to 2018.
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."
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