The Naples prosecution is investigating Napoli and its president, Aurelio De Laurentiis, for possible accounting fraud in connection with the signing of former LOSC striker Victor Osimhen and the transfer of four other players in the summer of 2020.
Italian justice has opened an investigation into possible accounting fraud by the Naples club in the context of the transfer of Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen, who arrived in the summer of 2020 from Lille, AFP learned on Tuesday from a judicial source.
The president of Napoli targeted
Searches took place in the Napoli offices, in Castel Volturno and in Rome, “aiming to collect useful documents in relation to alleged illegal behavior related to the sale and purchase of certain players in the summer of 2020”, said the Naples prosecutor’s office in a statement. Neapolitan President Aurelio De Laurentiis is particularly targeted by this investigation, said several Italian media.
The prosecution indicates that the searches carried out in Italy respond to requests from the Italian and French judicial authorities. The Lille club had also been the subject of a search in the Osimhen file in May.
An exchange that questions
The Nigerian striker joined Napoli in 2020 in a move believed to be around €70m. But Napoli lowered the bill by selling the French club four players for a total of around 20 million euros. This sum was considered by the press as largely overvalued given the profile of the players in question, three of whom have in fact never played for Lille.
In April, the Italian club’s lawyer had defended the “sincerity of the operation” Osimhen on the sidelines of another procedure, launched by the Italian sports justice against a dozen clubs for alleged accounting fraud. All these clubs had been acquitted in this sports component.
The lawyer defends himself from a sincere operation
“We highlighted the sincerity of the operation, by demonstrating how the value of Osimhen, and of the four players transferred from Naples to Lille, was determined on the basis of considerations of a technical nature”, assured the lawyer Mattia Grassani at Corriere dello Sport.
Of the four players bought by the Mastiffs, only the Greek goalkeeper Oréstis Karnézis (36) has actually joined the Lille workforce. However, he only played one meeting, in March 2021, until the termination of his contract announced on May 30 by Losc.
One of the players has “never been to Lille”
The other three, Italian striker Ciro Palmieri (22), Italian winger Luigi Liguori (24) and central defender Claudio Manzi (22), were immediately loaned and then sold. They played last season in the 3rd or 4th division in Italy.
One of them, Luigi Liguori, admitted last December in the daily La Repubblica to have “never been to Lille”, not even to sign the contract. This player, sold to Losc for some 4 million euros, confided his “anger” after this operation which, he added, “weighed” on his career
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