FC Barcelona has initiated legal proceedings against Real Madrid President Florentino Perez. The Catalan club filed the arbitration request required under Spanish law. Should no agreement be reached, Barcelona announced it would file a criminal complaint for defamation.
The background to this is comments made by Perez regarding the Negreira case at a press conference on May 12 and in an interview the following day.
The Negreira case involves payments made by FC Barcelona between 2001 and 2018 totaling approximately 8.4 million euros to companies owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the former vice president of the Spanish Referees’ Committee. These payments have been under judicial investigation since 2023. The investigation was extended again in early 2026 by six months, until at least September 2026.
Barca Fights Back Against Allegations
As Barcelona stated in its declaration, the club accuses the Real Madrid president of knowingly making false claims that have damaged the club’s reputation. With this motion, Barca aims to have Perez retract the statements in question. Perez described the Negreira case as “the biggest corruption scandal in the history of soccer.”
Among other things, Perez had said that Barcelona had paid for Negreira’s services for two decades. As a result, the archrival had regularly been favored by referees’ decisions and had thus influenced the competition. Real Madrid had consequently had numerous championships “stolen” from them.
In April 2023, Barcelona President Joan Laporta had rejected all allegations of possible “sports corruption” and spoke of a “public and media witch hunt.” Barca, like other clubs, had sought “professional advice” from a person with “experience in refereeing,” he said. The club had paid for refereeing advice and analyses. To date, there is no evidence of match-fixing or direct bribery of referees. LaLiga President Javier Tebas also stated in an interview in early 2026 that “Barcelona did not bribe referees, as the media coverage suggests.”