The club has consistently maintained that the payments, totaling just over €7 million, were made for services related to technical reports on match officials and scouting reports on young players in Spain. Barcelona had also previously appealed against the charges of bribery.
Despite a lack of concrete evidence against the Catalan giants, the investigations into the matter persist, and now club president Joan Laporta finds himself among the accused.
In a letter to Laporta, Judge Joaquin Aguirre outlined the reasoning behind charging the Barcelona president with bribery. The statute of limitations for the crimes of bribery and sports corruption, the two charges attributed to the case, is set at ten years.
Initially, it was determined that actions predating March 2013 (ten-year statute of limitation) were not subject to criminal liability, given that the case was opened in March 2023.
However, Judge Aguirre has reinterpreted the matter, asserting that the statute of limitations for a continuous crime should be calculated from the date of the last criminal act, which occurred in 2018.
Consequently, the judge believes that the appropriate calculation of the statute of limitations goes back ten years from 2018, bringing it to July 2008, during Laporta's first presidency (2003-2010).
Laporta's defense now has a five-day window to file an appeal with the Provincial Court of Barcelona, contesting this new interpretation by Aguirre, which is anticipated.
Subsequently, the Barcelona Court will take several weeks to review the matter and either confirm or annul the investigating judge's decision. If annulled, Laporta will no longer be under investigation.
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