Juventus under investigation: Agnelli, Nedved and Paratici risk jail
Juventus president Andrea Agnelli, Pavel Nedved and Fabio Paratici are under investigation for false accounting, tax evasion and false capital gains.
Juventus are back in trouble after the Calciopoli match fixing scandal of 2006. The former Serie A champions now find themselves in similar waters this season risking a number of penalties from Italian authorities.
Public Prosecutor’s Office and soldiers of the Guardia di Finanza raided the Turin and Milan offices of Juventus Football Club. Juventus are officially under investigation for false accounting, tax evasion and false capital gains.
Bianconeri president Andrea Agnelli, vice-president Pavel Nedved, former sporting director Fabio Paratici and three other executives of the financial area are currently under investigation and risk criminal charges reports Gazzetta dello Sport.
The Turin Public Prosecutor opened a case after CONSOB had launched an inspection last July and after a COVISOC report which had triggered the Federal Prosecutor to investigate the suspicious movement of 50 million euros. Transfers such as the swap deal between Arthur and Pjanic are being scrutinized.
If the accusations prove true Juventus risk severe penalizations, including significant points deduction in the league. While Agnelli, Nedved and Paratici risk up to jail time.
The press release from the Public Prosecutor’s Office
“Since today’s afternoon, on the orders of this Public Prosecutor’s Office, soldiers of the Guardia di Finanza have been carrying out local searches at the Turin and Milan offices of Juventus Football Club Spa – says the press release issued by the Prosecutor just before 11 pm -. The financiers of the Turin Economic-Financial Police Unit, delegated to the investigations, were instructed to find documentation and other useful elements relating to the company financial statements approved in the years from 2019 to 2021, with reference to both the purchase and sale of rights to the sports performance of the players, and the regular formation of financial statements. At present, the activities are aimed at ascertaining the crime of false communications from listed companies and issuing invoices for non-existent transactions to the top management and the managers of the business, financial and sports management areas“.
Investigation opened in May
The Prosecutor’s Office says: “There are various transfer operations of professional players and the services rendered by some agents involved in the relative intermediaries under consideration. The profile of administrative responsibility for a crime is also assumed to be borne by the company, provided for if a legal person has benefited from the commission of certain specific offenses. To protect the financial market, the searches were started after the closing of the weekly trading of the Italian Stock Exchange (…). The investigation, called “Prisma”, started in May 2021 and is entrusted to a pool of Magistrates of the Economy Group, made up of Deputy Prosecutors Ciro Santoriello, Mario Bendoni and Deputy Prosecutor Marco Gianoglio, also making use of technical activities of interception of communications”.
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