Barcelona payments to referee official’s company examined

Spanish league clubs expressed unease on Tuesday about payments by Barcelona to a referees’ official for years.

Barcelona has been under scrutiny since a state prosecutor was revealed to be probing club payments totaling millions of dollars to a company that belonged to the vice president of the Spanish federation’s refereeing committee. Barcelona has denied any wrongdoing, saying it paid for technical reports on referees but never tried to influence their decisions in games.

The league released a statement saying the majority of clubs showed “deep concern about this case, which they consider to be of the utmost seriousness.”

League president Javier Tebas said the case damaged the reputation of Spanish soccer and Barcelona president Joan Laporta “should resign if he can’t explain the payments.” Laporta said Tuesday the club will soon explain itself, but attacked what he called a campaign to try to damage Barcelona’s name.

“Tebas has always showed that he is anti-barcelona,” Laporta said. “He tries to destabilize us. But I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of resigning.”

Barcelona said it started its own investigation into the case with outside help.

The league said the proposal of a joint statement from the clubs against Barcelona received “unanimous support” of all clubs in the first and second divisions with the exception of Barcelona and Real Madrid,“who objected to the joint statement for different reasons.” Madrid president Florentino Pérez has been historically at odds with Tebas.