The FIGC Court of Appeal published this afternoon the reasons for the sentence that punished Juventus with 15 points for their alleged fictitious capital gains. The judges were clear about the reasons that led to the reopening of the trial, as requested by the FIGC Prosecutor’s Office (Juve had been acquitted in April) thanks to “the documentation from the Turin Prosecutor’s Office transmitted to that of the Federation”. The picture was illustrated through “an impressive amount of evidence”, which led to a stark conclusion: “Juventus’ balance sheets are simply not reliable”.
The judges punished Juve more than what the Prosecutor’s Office requested, going from nine points to 15, due to “accounting alterations of significant dimension and intensity”, confirmed by the documentation “with the value of a confession by the club’s managers, the unequivocal wiretapping and concealment interventions or manipulation of invoices”.
Following inspections by the Consob, the Italian authority that oversees companies listed on the stock market, The Turin Prosecutor’s Office began the Prisma investigation, thanks to which the Federcalcio judges were able to analyze “new facts that revealed the intention behind the alteration of the transfer operations, in the absence of any valuation method and the presence of a fraudulent system that the Federal Court could not know”.
For the judges, “The concealment operations of some Juventus executives were relevant, who even corrected the Zintego like invoices received with ballpoint pens so that the swap nature of the operations did not stand out”. All this, then, led “to a sanction that must be proportionate with the inevitable alteration of the sporting result.” La Vecchia Signora will file an appeal before the CONI Guarantee Committee, the third and last degree of Italian sports justice, although she will soon have to deal with two more sports trials. The Federcalcio Prosecutors are investigating the ‘salary maneuver’ (that of the ‘Cristiano Letter’), which could lead to even more serious sanctions, and about other capital gains with other Serie A clubs.
Juventus response
Juve has issued a statement in response to the publication of the motivations of the FIGC Prosecutor’s Office: “Juventus Football Club and its legal team have carefully read and will analyze in depth the justifications, recently published, of the decision of the United Sections of the Federal Court of Appeals. It is a document, predictable in its content, in light of the serious decision, but vitiated by obvious illogicality, lack of motivation and lack of foundation in the terms of law, to which the Company and individuals will oppose appeal before the CONI Guarantee Board”.