Football: Italian prosecutors seek to reopen accounting trial against Juve, other clubs
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Juventus president Andrea Agnelli (second from left) and vice-chairman of the board of directors Pavel Nedved (left).
PHOTO: REUTERS
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MILAN - Italy’s football prosecutors are seeking the partial cancellation of a ruling that cleared Juventus and other clubs and their executives following an accounting investigation involving capital gains,
A report by the Supervisory Commission for Serie A clubs (Covisoc) into player trading activity was carried out and submitted to football’s federal prosecutor in 2021, with an investigation then launched.
However, in April, the sport’s federal appeals court cleared all 11 clubs under investigation, including Juventus and Napoli, and 59 individuals, among them former Juve president Andrea Agnelli and Napoli chief Aurelio de Laurentiis.
“The federal prosecutor, having examined the documents and preliminary acts of the ‘Prisma’ criminal investigation... has lodged an appeal for partial revocation of the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal,” the FIGC said in a statement.
The request to reopen the trial and apply sanctions concerns nine of the 11 clubs, including Serie A sides Juventus, Sampdoria and Empoli, as well as 52 of the 59 executives of those clubs.
The FIGC document requests that in a reopened trial they be “sentenced to the penalties that will be respectively requested during the hearing to discuss the appeal before the Federal Court of Appeal”.
Juventus said in a statement it had been notified of the prosecutors’ request and it was sure it could demonstrate again that it had acted correctly.
It added: “The company will articulate its defences... trusting that it will be able to further demonstrate the correctness of its actions, the absence of new elements relevant to the judgment with respect to the decision of the Federal Court of Appeals, and the lack of the prerequisites of the proposed appeal.”
Juventus, the country’s most successful club with 36 top-flight titles, is also under scrutiny by Italy’s ordinary prosecutors and market watchdog for alleged false accounting.
These prosecutors have requested that Agnelli, 11 other people and the club itself stand trial.
Capital gains through exchange agreements have been discussed in Italy in recent years, due to the difficulty of establishing a precise market value for players included in swop deals.
The FIGC and also the football prosecutors had opened new disciplinary proceedings concerning Juventus and other unnamed clubs in the framework of the capital gains investigation of the 2021-22 football season. REUTERS
