Rome, Nov 29 (EFE) .- From the “secret letter” about the signing of Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo to the fictitious sales to heal the economic balance, Juventus is involved in a storm after the accusations of tax fraud by the Prosecutor’s Office of Turin (northern Italy) that could even lead to an administrative decline.
The loss of category and the revocation of the titles requested this Monday by the Italian Consumers Association (Codacons), in case the accusations are confirmed, represent only the last chapter of a season started in the worst possible way for Juventus, On and off the field.
Added to the negative results in Serie A, in which Juventus is seventh and 14 points out of the lead, was added the investigation by the Turin Prosecutor’s Office, which searched the club’s headquarters and discovered suspicious activities in the sale of footballers thanks to interceptions telephone.
Among the conversations heard, according to the Italian media, there is also talk of a “famous letter that technically should not exist” referring to Cristiano Ronaldo, signed in the summer of 2018 from Real Madrid and transferred in the last market to Manchester United.
Cristiano’s purchase, for 117 million euros from Real Madrid, and his salary of 31 million net per season (60 gross) represented a huge expense and difficult to sustain for the club’s coffers.
The coronavirus pandemic, which significantly reduced economic income, exacerbated the problem of a team that approved a capital increase of 399 million euros last week.
In the conversations there are also references to the then head of the sports area Fabio Paratici, who left Juventus last summer and now in English Tottenham, who achieved significant capital gains thanks to the sale of footballers, in several cases with voluntarily inflated market value. .
According to the investigators of the Prosecutor’s Office, the president of Juventus, Andrea Agnelli, and the vice president, Pavel Nedved, were clear about Paratici’s activities.
And it is believed that the Juventine club used to carry out a series of defined “mirror” operations, in which players were officially exchanged with the same market value and “without money movements” that caused a “positive effect on the balance sheets”.
Among them, for example, a recent transaction closed with Marseille is analyzed, which saw the sale of Franco Tongya and the purchase of French Marley Ake, both with a market value of eight million euros.
“Clear indications emerged to consider that the values of the transfers in question were not the result of a physiological market negotiation, but that they were operations unrelated to real market values, pre-ordered and that caused exclusively accounting, fictitious profits”, consider the investigators from the Prosecutor’s Office, as revealed by “La Gazzetta dello Sport”.
In this context, Juventus, which has been listed on the Milan Stock Exchange for years, recorded significant losses on Monday.
It falls more than 6%, after the Italian authorities opened the investigation against the governing body to clarify whether fraud has been committed in the sale of players.
Investors dispose of their titles, after the Italian authorities investigated the Juventus offices on Friday to obtain documentation related to the accounts for the 2019-2021 period.
Its shares accumulate a drop of 24.16% in the last month and 29.09% in the last six months on the Milanese market.
The Turin club expressed its willingness to collaborate with the investigators and this week several directors of the club will appear before the Prosecutor’s Office to defend their positions.
Andrea Montolivo
(c) EFE Agency
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