Juve, what risks from a sporting point of view

The Juventus earthquake could also have important effects from a sporting point of view. The question Juventus fans ask themselves (but also others…) is always the same: what is the club at risk in the league? Immediately after the closure of the Prisma investigation, the federal prosecutor’s office requested the documents, which arrived just two days ago. The chief prosecutor Giuseppe Chiné must now analyze them, page after page, to understand two fundamental things: whether there are the details for the “procedure for revocation” of the sentence which in the Federal Court of Appeal had acquitted the eleven clubs and the 59 managers under indictment for the capital gains case, including the Juventus players, and those for the opening of a new file on the issue of private agreements between clubs and players.

sports scenarios

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The first line, as was said, ended with the acquittal of Agnelli, Paratici, Arrivabene, Nedved, Cherubini and the Juventus board of directors at the time of the events (between 2019 and 2021) because it was deemed impossible to fix the real value of a player to the point that a variation, even an important one, of the value itself could have probative value in the courtroom. If wiretaps or elements proving the offense emerge from the documents of the Turin prosecutor’s office (as in the case of Chievo and Cesena, the only clubs hitherto sanctioned for capital gains: Campedelli’s club also received 3 penalty points for this reason, the black and white failed before the trial), it could go back to the Federal Court. The second trend, the one that revolves around the private charter signed with Ronaldo and the suspended salaries for Covid but then “returned” by other players, should be completely new and could lead to the opening of a new file. If both circumstances occur and the salary line is recognized as a new element of the first investigation, a single investigation against Juve and its management could be carried out in the Federal Court.

The risks

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Sanctions for violations in management and economic matters, and therefore for administrative offences, are regulated by article 31 of the sports justice code. The scenarios are different. If “the falsification of one’s accounting or administrative documents or any other illicit or elusive activity” (from capital gains to salaries) has made it possible to obtain registration for the championship, the fine will be much heavier. In fact, paragraph 2 states that the sanctions range from the “penalization of one or more points in the standings” to “relegation to the last place in the standings of the relevant championship and therefore the passage to the lower category”, up to exclusion from the championship with assignment by the Federal Council to one of the lower category championships. If the change in the financial statements had not been decisive for enrollment in the championship, the sanctions (paragraph 1) would be limited to a hefty fine and the inhibition of the executives involved, therefore without penalty points, as requested by Chiné already in the first instance .

Salaries

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However, the points penalties could come only for the issue of salaries and private cards. Paragraph 3 of the usual article 31 reads: “The company that makes agreements with its members or in any case pays them compensation, bonuses or indemnities in violation of the federal provisions in force, is punished with a fine ranging from one to three times the amount unlawfully agreed or paid, to which the penalty of one or more points in the standings may be added”. And on this point the players could also be involved, who risk a “disqualification of no less than a month”.