Juve, the interceptions: “obstructionism” towards Consob and an auditor “little third”

In the deeds filed by the Turin public prosecutor’s office with the judge for preliminary investigations, among the various profiles challenged by the prosecutors regarding the operations implemented by Juventus, there is the part relating to organizational deficiencies and relations with Consob. In fact, this body had requested the club to produce a memorandum relating to the absence of effective control procedures on the formation of the value of the players, considering the lack of “formalities and documentary controls”.

“filibustering”

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In addition to having recognized an “obstructive attitude” of the Juventus managers, the Public Prosecutor’s Office noted the “active and not fully third party role of the statutory auditor Roberto Grossi”, the statutory auditor at Ernst & Young under investigation for false corporate communications of a company listed on the Stock Exchange and considered co-author of the documents with which Juve replied to Consob. This involvement is considered “in clear friction with the impartiality that should distinguish this function” and this would emerge from a telephone conversation on 6 September 2021, which took place between Grossi and Stefano Cerrato, Chief Corp & Financial Officer of Juventus.

Grossi and Cerrato

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Cerrato explains that he has prepared a draft on which he would like an opinion from Grossi: “If you read it, you’ll just give me on the phone if there are any observations, more than anything that there aren’t any things of the slightest countertrend with what, for example, you also wrote”. Grossi suggests some changes in this regard: “I would remove randomness, I would leave only subjectivity. You talk about negotiation which is made up of men […] so you don’t explain the market, you explain what men do and to say that they operate on a random basis is a bit strong”. The reviewer continues with another note: “When he closes on page 6 with the writing ‘even to a significant extent compared to the values ​​of some example sites Transfermarkt’ I would stop here, I would not say ‘which in fact are never used as a reference by professionals’ […] in some cases some transactions coincide with those values ​​there, which is then a coincidence, but how to say, never never never ever used […] he’s very assertive.”

Cerrato and Bertola

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Cerrato discusses it with Stefano Bertola, former Chief Financial Officer. The two are under investigation for the same crimes (false corporate communications of a company listed on the Stock Exchange, issuing of false invoices), with Cerrato also having the obstacle to exercise the functions of the Supervisory Authority. Cerrato explains the situation in simple terms: “In fact we are telling him that Paratici has signed transfers individually or together with Pavel (Nedved, ed) on values ​​that have nothing to do with Transfermarkt and there is no decision-making process internal document […] but this […] we can’t make it up afterwards, can we?”. At this point the two reason on the positive sides of the situation, ie the effective absence of formalization of decision-making processes. In fact, Bertola claims: “Put it like this, I’m almost happy about it, right? In other words, it would almost be a matter of rejoicing in our respective positions”. Cerrato, as emerges from the documents, agrees with Bertola: “I tried to see if by chance there was something more we could give them, because suppose they asked us for this extra memory […] to close the verification here, let us understand in some way that that exchange operation there were with fair values ​​and tell us that it was on average 50% more than Transfermarkt, rather than it was in line with Transfermarkt, but unfortunately these things here […] we can’t get them out, nor is it much better for us to get them out honestly here”.