At the trial against Juve also a lawyer from Prato, a Viola super fan [notiziediprato.it]

A Fiorentina fan traveling to Turin to ‘face’ Juventus. In the baggage, neither flags nor purple scarves but the toga together with a lot of paperwork because today, Monday 27 March, the management was not the Allianz Stadium but the Palace of Justice. Among the crowd of lawyers gathered in Turin for the preliminary hearing of the Prisma investigation, there is also the civil lawyer Duccio Balestri, from Prato, former president of the Civil Chamber. It is up to him to assist, in his capacity as Siti’s lawyer, the Italian union for the protection of investments and savings, two of the thirty plus shareholders who have asked the judge of the preliminary hearings to form a civil party in the proceeding against Juventus and of twelve former executives and former directors who ended up at the center of the Prisma investigation into the company’s accounts and balance sheets.
Attorney Balestri, as did all his colleagues, asked for the recognition of ‘offended persons’ for his clients, holders of Juventus shares. And while the judge of the preliminary hearings has reserved himself (the hearing has been postponed to 10 May), the decision on the ‘civil liability’ has already been taken: both Juventus and the company that audited the accounts in the years between 2019 and 2021 were sued for the possible reimbursement of damages not only to the shareholders but also to Consob.
There are four charges for which the Turin prosecutor’s office has requested indictment: false corporate communications of a company listed on the stock exchange, obstacle to the supervisory bodies, false invoicing, market manipulation. According to the prosecutors, the club would have altered the 2019, 2020 and 2021 financial statements by accounting for fictitious or artificial capital gains and operating salary maneuvers. Accusations for which Juventus has already suffered a 15-point penalty in the current championship.
Balestri is therefore waiting to know if the documents prepared to demonstrate the legitimacy of his clients to be part of the ranks of the civil parties will prove convincing in the eyes of the judge. The answer will come in a month and a half when the judge of the preliminary hearings returns to the courtroom. Until then, according to the lawyer from Prato, Juventus will once again be just the rival team – the most rival of all – of his Fiorentina.

nadia tarantino