MILAN,
Italy — Key
figures at
Juventus and
Napoli, including chairmen Andrea Agnelli and Aurelio
De Laurentiis, face possible lengthy bans as a trial over suspicious football
transfers began on Monday, the Italian FA announced.
اضافة اعلان
Prosecutors at the country’s
football federation (FIGC) have asked for Agnelli to be banned from the game for a year
over his alleged role in suspected inflated transfer values designed to
artificially boost clubs’ balance sheets.
Agnelli is just one of 61 people before the
FIGC’s tribunal along with Juve’s former sporting director Fabio Paratici, his
replacement Federico Cherubini, CEO
Maurizio Arrivabene, and vice-chairman and
former player Pavel Nedved.
Now at Tottenham Hotspur, Paratici faces a
potential ban of 16 months and 10 days, the longest requested by prosecutors
for any individual.
Nedved and Arrivabene face eight months while
Cherubini, along with six other Juve directors, is looking at nearly seven
months.
Film mogul De Laurentiis has to defend
himself against a potential 11-month suspension while his wife and two children
Edoardo and Valentina, who all have roles at the club, could be banned for six
months and 10 days.
Prosecutors have also asked for bans for
figures at three other Serie A clubs — Empoli, Genoa, and Sampdoria — and six
lower league teams including former top-flight outfit Chievo who went bust last
year.
Juve,
Italy’s most successful club, faces an
800,000 euro fine while Napoli could end up having to pay 392,000 euros. The
rest of the clubs involved in the trial also face fines of varying severity.
The trial reportedly regards 62 transfers
over three seasons between 2019 and 2021, with the majority involving Juve but
the biggest being Victor Osimhen’s 70 million euro move from Lille to Napoli.
That transfer stands out as it involved four
players valued at just over 20 million euros moving to Lille as part of the
deal. Three of them never played for the French club and are now in Italy’s
lower divisions.
Italian media report that the trial should be
finished by Friday, with rulings to come next week. However, the appeals
process is likely to be long-winded given the number of clubs and individuals
being prosecuted by the FIGC.
In addition to the FIGC trial,
Juve are also
being investigated by prosecutors in Turin over alleged inflated capital gains
made between 2019 and 2021.
The club is suspected of having presented false
accounting information to investors and producing invoices for non-existent
transactions over that period.
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