Suspicious transactions, inflated costs of players, accounting irregularities. The prosecutors of Rome and Tivoli take the field with investigations into possible irregularities in the sale of players from Rome, Lazio and Salernitana. Checks that concern four football seasons, from 2017 to the one that ended in the summer of 2021, and which led to the entry in the register of suspects of the top management of the companies: from the president of Lazio, Claudio Lotito, to the president and vice president of Roma Dan and Ryan Friedkin and former company patron James Pallotta. With them also a dozen managers.
The acceleration of the preliminary investigation took place with a series of searches and acquisitions of documents carried out in the offices of the three clubs by the men of the Economic-Financial Police Unit of the Guardia di Finanza in Rome. As far as Rome is concerned, a total of 11 operations have come to the attention of the investigators, 7 of which concern the Biancoceleste club and Salernitana. In recent days, in Piazzale Clodio, due to territorial jurisdiction, the documents of the Turin max investigation have arrived on a series of market transactions that the Juventus club has had with a series of other teams. In particular, the segment of the Prisma proceeding was sent to the attention of the Capitoline magistrates which concerns the sales of the players Luca Pellegrini and Leonardo Spinazzola which took place close to 30 June 2019 before the closing of the financial statements. But the investigation into the Giallorossi club, which sees nine people plus the club investigated, also concerns the transfers of Marchizza and Frattesi to Sassuolo, Tumminello to Atalanta, Luca Pellegrini to Juve, Cetin, Cancellieri and Diaby to Verona. As for the purchases beyond Spinazzola, the names are those of Defrel from Sassuolo, Cristante from Atalanta and Kumbulla from Verona. The crimes alleged for various reasons range from false corporate communications to fraudulent declarations through false invoicing.
For its part, the investigation by the Tivoli prosecutor’s office, as the chief prosecutor Francesco Menditto specifies in a note, concerns “SS Lazio Spa and US Salernitana 1919 srl” and the verification activity is not connected “with others carried out by other prosecutors of the Republic”. In the municipality on the outskirts of Rome the proceeding was initiated a few days ago and the crimes being prosecuted are “issuing invoices for non-existent transactions and fraudulent declaration through the use of invoices for non-existent transactions” as well as for “false corporate communications against some people who, as mentioned, must consider themselves innocent until a final conviction”. The suspicious transactions are those related to the players Sprocati, Casasola, Marino, Cicerelli, Novella, Morrone, Akpa Akpro. In particular, the indictment states that Lotito, as Chairman of the Management Board of “SS Lazio SpA”, together with Marco Moschini as Managing Director, Marco Cavaliere, as Administrative Director and Igli Tare as Sports Director of the Company , “in competition with each other, making use of the sales invoices of the players sold by US Salernitana, the result of artificial evaluations with respect to the market value of the individual player at the time of the sale, indicated in the annual tax returns fictitious passive elements (“inflated” costs ), as well as making the respective disproportionate purchase values of the players appear in the company financial statements, thus distorting the value of the sports club’s assets”. With regard to the searches carried out, Us Salernitana 1919 “clarifies that the current shareholding structure is completely extraneous to the operations under investigation” and specifies that it has “extended its utmost collaboration to the investigative bodies” and that “it remains at their further disposal”.
“Lazio is a crystal house in which all the documents are in place and always available to all the authorities”: this is how Claudio Lotito’s company replies to the news of the search by the GdF ordered by the Tivoli prosecutor’s office. “In our work, we have always adhered to a perspective of loyal and total cooperation – the note continues – and, therefore, any documentation requested of us would have been immediately delivered by us. However, we have the utmost respect for the judiciary and we therefore trust to quickly dispel any misunderstanding or doubt in relation to the disputed hypotheses”