UEFA has punished FC Barcelona with a fine.
European football governing body UEFA
UEFA announced the development on Friday, explaining that during the 2022/2023 season, "the CFCB First Chamber, chaired by Sunil Gulati, concluded the assessment of the break-even requirement covering the financial years 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
"This is the last time the CFCB assessed the clubs on the basis of the 'old' Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, Edition 2018," it added.
After listing punishments for Royal Antwerp FC and Trabzonspor of €2 million each for not complying with "the break-even requirement", UEFA explained that Barca have been hit a fine of €500,000 "for wrongly reporting, in the financial year 2022, profits on disposal of intangible assets (other than player transfers) which are not a relevant income under the regulations".
The fine has nothing to do with the 'Caso Negreira' Referees Committee Payments Scandal from which Barca reportedly feared a possible ban from the Champions League.
Barca were charged for "continued corruption in the sports field" in March by the Barcelona provincial prosecutor’s office as a consequence of payments made to the Ex-Vice President of the Referees Committee Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
As reported by El Mundo, Barca allegedly paid Negreira almost €7 million ($7.7 million) from 2001 to 2018 taking in current president Joan Laporta's first reign which spanned from 2003 to 2010.
Laporta has protested Barca's innocence in public and denied all wrongdoing. After UEFA launched its own investigation for a possible infraction of its laws, Laporta flew to meet his counterpart at the organization Aleksander Ceferin.
UEFA-appointed investigators originally thought Barca should be banned from the Champions League for a season reported ABC, but Laporta said that the club feels "calmer now" that such a punishment won't be forthcoming during an interview with Mundo Deportivo this week.
Laporta explained that a recommendation from investigators led to the conclusion that Barca "cannot be convicted before being tried".
"They understand that this must be the procedure and they have made it known to the UEFA Appeal Committee", Laporta said.
"All the news leads to us playing the Champions League, which has been difficult. There have been difficult moments when we have suffered.
"Going to speak with [UEFA President Aleksander] Ceferin in Ljubljana was an important step in understanding that we could not be convicted before being tried, and that there is no arbitral corruption in the Negreira case," Laporta continued.
As things stand, Barca will be in the Champions League group stage draw as La Liga winners when it is made on August 31.