Tebas demands the dismissal of Laporta from the RFEF board

Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, stressed that Luis Rubiales should dismiss Joan Laporta as a member of the Board of Directors of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) due to his possible relationship with the Negreira case. The top leader of La Liga, after the presentation of the ‘ISDE Sports Convention 2023’, made it clear that Laporta should leave the RFEF Board of Directors and pointed to Rubiales, its president, as the only person responsible when making that decision. “Rather than resigning, he should be dismissed by the president of the RFEF. He has a manager that his club is involved in paying 20 years to the vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees. You shouldn’t be on the Board of Directors. But that is a decision of the president of the RFEF”, he affirmed. “The boards of directors of the federation are appointed by the president. They are matters of the personal decision of the president of the federation. It is not a matter of election. This is a case of his free will decision. I think he should stop it. If he does not stop it because he has given clear explanations, that he gives us all those explanations. But he participated in a period that is prescribed in the criminal sphere, but he participated with the payments and I think he should be dismissed, “he added. In addition, he clarified that if Laporta has not yet been dismissed as a member of the Board of Directors because “at the time” he participated in paying the vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (Negreira), it does not mean that the RFEF “is protecting” the president of Barcelona. Also, in reference to the Negreira case, he indicated that “one thing” is that the results have been influenced and another is that “they had the intention” to influence. For Tebas, only with the intention of influencing “whatever” in the arbitration issue, Barcelona is already committing both a sporting and criminal offense. “I don’t believe either, and I said it, that referees have been bought. I don’t believe that there are referees that have been sold. What I see, Negreira said, is that they tried to influence so that the referees were neutral. That already, at a sporting level, is prescribed. But at the criminal level, no,” he added. The Spanish prosecution had charged Barcelona FC and its former presidents, Josep Maria Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell, during their trial for allegedly paying millions of Dollars to former referee Jose Maria Negrera, on charges of corruption, irrational management, and forgery of documents. The accusations came after investigations conducted by the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office about a year ago, on suspicion of providing Negrera with funds estimated at 7 million euros by Barca to the company owned by the latter, in return for providing suspicious oral advice to the club.