The “note 10940” with which the Federal Prosecutor’s Office on 14 April 2021 provides Covisoc with clarifications on the accounting of some transfer market operations will therefore be viewed in the next few hours by the lawyers who follow the black and white defense. The Council of State has in fact rejected the urgent appeal of the FIGC against the decision of the Lazio TAR of 6 March 2023 which obliges the federal justice bodies to deliver it. The merits of the matter will be examined on March 23, to establish whether Juventus will actually be able to use it in the appeal before the Coni Guarantee Board.
The appeal of the FIGC rejected
Technically, in the capital gains process reopened against Juventus and its top managers which led to 15 penalty points for the club, some of the sanctioned subjects, Fabio Paratici and Federico Cherubini, turned to the TAR which proved them right on the performance of the “Covisoc document”, the irrelevance of which, however, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has so far reaffirmed in every venue, precisely denying its delivery. In filing an appeal with the Council of State, the FIGC also requested a precautionary measure to suspend the transfer of the note. The Council of State rejected this request stating that “the conditions for the monocratic measure do not exist and noted that what is deduced by the appellant can, hypothetically, support the existence of a periculum according to an ordinary collective precautionary request, but not of a request pursuant to art. 56 cpa, reserved only for hypotheses of “extreme gravity and urgency” and, therefore, connected to a damage that can be defined as “catastrophic” for the inferring party”. As a consequence of this, the Council of State confirmed the order of the TAR “to show the appellant a copy of the note from the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, within seven days of the administrative communication of this sentence or of the notification, if earlier”. However, according to what was reported by Ansa, having received the decree, the FIGC immediately took steps to deliver the document.
The document
The “note 10940” of the FIGC prosecutor’s office could highlight, according to the thesis of the defense, a violation of the procedural times of the sports judicial process in the capital gains case and lead to a sentence by the Guarantee Board at Coni in favor of Juve. But what is it about? According to what has emerged from the Tar’s decision in this document, Covisoc, the body that supervises the accounting of professional football clubs, requested and obtained from the Federal Prosecutor’s Office clarifications on some “cases for which it is not easy to appreciate what the criteria to which the contracting parties complied in order to agree on the relative price”. The Public Prosecutor’s Office in turn allegedly “provided interpretative indications to Covisoc for the purpose of issuing the note, with which the Commission itself then proceeded to make a report regarding the assessment of the effects of the players’ sale on the financial statements of some professional clubs for the purposes of the registration to the respective championships».
The doubts of Juventus
The lawyers of Juve and other clubs involved in the capital gains investigation had asked to be able to view the document. However, the request was rejected by the federal prosecutor Giuseppe Chinè who explained that the same “is not part of the documentation acquired in the context of the disciplinary procedure”. The document, therefore, is irrelevant to the federal prosecutor’s office. For the Juventus lawyers, on the contrary, the note in question would testify to an exchange of correspondence and documents between the federal prosecutor’s office and Covisoc on the capital gains case and therefore the disciplinary procedure would be considered to have already started on 21 April 2021. This date is not irrelevant. The procedural process in the sports field imposes the obligation to register the proceeding within 30 days of receiving the news of the offense in the specific register and normally allows 60 days for the duration of the investigations. Consequently, the investigative acts subsequent to July 14, 2021 would be useless. Basically, according to the defense lawyers, the disciplinary action would be inadmissible.