High noon. The FIGC appeals court has set the hearing to decide on a possible new sporting trial on the alleged fictitious capital gains of Juventus and 9 other clubs (Empoli, Genoa, the “old” Novara , Parma, Pescara, Pisa, Pro Vercelli and Sampdoria) with 52 executives involved. The federal prosecutor could in fact reopen the proceeding after closing the previous investigation on 21 February 2022 which had led to the acquittal of the Juventus club in April because there was no “reasonable certainty, given by serious, concordant and multiple indications”. Scenario modifiable due to the alleged admissions of the suspects in the interceptions obtained thanks to the investigation of the ordinary judiciary.
Juventus could be accused of having violated article 31 of the Sports Justice Code, the one on the violation in managerial and economic matters. In the event of a conviction, paragraph 1 leads to fines and disqualifications, paragraph 2 connects any offenses to the possibility of registering for the championship and therefore to penalty points in the standings or relegations.
THE INTERCEPTIONS – On July 16, 2021 the former Chief Financial Officer, Marco Re: “You think of someone like Arthur, who paid 75 million to get the Pjanic capital gainnow you also have to go under the knife… I mean, it was obvious isn’t it? That it wasn’t one of that figure there”.
On 3 September 2021 the president Andrea Agnelli on the phone with the managing director Maurizio Arrivabene: “It wasn’t just Covid and we know this well. We flooded the machine with depreciation and especially the m…, because it’s all the m… underneath that you can’t tell”.
On 6 September 2021, John Elkann told Andrea Agnelli: “You said that in the end there was, from the sports management, (…) they expanded. There are a whole series of operations that they have done.” Agnelli replies to Elkann: “Exactly, by making excessive use of the capital gains tool, if the market collapses, the market collapses! This is a fact”.
On 27 September 2021, the Chief Financial Officer Stefano Cerrato speaks with Cesare Gabasio (head of the legal department) and Roberto Spada (head of the board of statutory auditors: “In the past, the balance sheets of many football clubs were saved somewhat by these capital gains. We made a fifth of the capital gains of previous yearswe have not put in a business plan to make significant ones over the course of these years, so if we do them then they will be positive surprises, let’s say, they will be totally healthy”.
In September 2021, two members of the technical area, Matteo Tognozzi (“They asked for capital gains, we didn’t make the transfer market… we bought players without paying themthe truth is this”) and Giovanni Manna: “Fabio (Paratici, ed), you had to make the capital gains and you did the capital gains”.
On July 22, 2021 the sporting director Federico Cherubini at dinner with Stefano Bertola, former Chief Financial Officer: “You have activated a lawful method but you pushed it too much. If we go back to being the Juve we were a few years ago (…) we will have it at home, not artificial in values”.
Cherubini is also the author of the sheet, found in the searches, called the “Black Book FP”which the Juventus sporting director explained to the investigators as follows: “These are the notes I made in March-April 2021 when I went to discuss my contract renewal with Paratici (…). If I don’t clarify a series of things, which are what you find written here, I didn’t want to go on. In this document I put the critical profiles in the relationship with Fabio”. Among them is a clear note: “Excessive use of artificial capital gains” arrow “immediate benefit, loaded depreciation”.
Then on November 27, 2021, Cherubini himself explained to the Public Prosecutor’s Office: “In meetings held with the rest of the management, the fact was assessed that we had to go towards a different technical project and that recourse to capital gains should no longer be a characteristic of our management I several times I complained to Fabio that the value we were giving to those players wasn’t fair”.
