聲討黑哨巴
How have the football authorities reacted?
“It’s incomprehensible that Barca was paying the vice-president of the referees for so many years,” La Liga president Javier Tebas said at a press conference in April 2023. “I don’t think Barcelona bought referees,
but there are indications that the payments were intended to influence. The mere intention can be punishable conduct.”
Tebas also said that Barca would not be punished by Spanish sport authorities as five years had passed since the last payment had been made, and the statute of limitation in sport is just three years.
Meanwhile, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin described the situation as “
one of the most serious in football that I have ever seen” in an interview with the Slovenian newspaper Ekipa, also in April 2023.
He added: “I cannot comment directly on this for two reasons. Firstly, because we have an independent disciplinary committee in charge of this. And secondly, because I have not dealt with this matter in detail. The matter is time-barred for La Liga; for UEFA, nothing is time-barred.”