Barcelona refereeing scandal Q&A: Will they face UCL ban?

Two months after the story first broke, Barcelona president Joan Laporta came out swinging in a two-hour news conference on Monday, but there remain as many questions as answers surrounding the refereeing controversy that has rocked the Spanish champions-elect.

Barca should be preparing to celebrate a first LaLiga title since 2019 — they are 11 points clear at the top with nine games to play — but instead the focus is off the pitch. In March, a court opened an investigation into payments totaling over €7 million made by the club to companies owned by the former vice president of the refereeing committee, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, between 2001 and 2018. Barca insist the money was paid transparently and for legitimate services, with Negreira's businesses providing the Catalan club with scouting reports and technical information on refereeing. Spanish prosecutors allege Barca were buying favour from match officials with the aim of influencing results, something the club strongly deny.

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As the fallout from the revelation of the payments continues, an argument between Laporta and LaLiga president Javier Tebas rages on; institutional relations between Barca and Real Madrid, which had improved in recent years, have been pushed to the breaking point; and, at the end of March, UEFA opened its own independent investigation. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has called it an «extremely serious situation, one of the most serious I have seen since I have been involved with football,» with possible punishments including Barcelona being thrown out of next season's Champions League.

In his news conference Monday, Laporta, ever the showman, fed the theory that there is an organised