Juve, sports investigation on capital gains: the sentences of the interceptions to reopen it

The sports investigation launched by the federal prosecutor’s office on the issue of capital gains ended in nothing, the April acquittal, because – the reasons explained – there was no “reasonable certainty, given by serious, concordant and multiple indications”. In other words, in a subject as uncertain as the evaluation of the players, the “smoking gun” was missing, which in this area it has always been thought could only be found in interceptions, ie an explicit admission that certain odds were artificial. This is what the federal prosecutor believes emerged in the 555-page closing file of the Prisma investigations which were not yet available to the FIGC in the context of the first sporting investigation which was closed on 21 February. Phrases which, according to the indictment, give elements to judge Juventus on article 31 of the Sports Justice Code, the one on Violation in management and economic matters.

THE PROPERTY’

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The policy to be redefined on capital gains was discussed at the highest possible black and white levels, in a conversation intercepted on 6 September 2021 between the president Andrea Agnelli and his cousin John Elkann, number one of Exor, owner of Juventus. Elkann says: “You said that in the end there was, on the part of the sports management, (…) they expanded. There are a whole series of operations that they have carried out”. To which Agnelli replies: “Exactly, by making excessive use of the capital gains instrument, if the market collapses, the market collapses! This is a fact”. Three days earlier, the Juve president had also talked about it with Maurizio Arrivabene, then at Juventus for a couple of months but on the board of directors since 2012. Speaking of the club’s accounts, the president said: “It wasn’t just Covid and we know this good. We flooded the machine with depreciation and above all the m**da, because it’s all the m**da underneath that you can’t tell”.

THE SOCIETY’

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Today’s Chief Financial Officer, Stefano Cerrato, speaking with Cesare Gabasio and Roberto Spada, respectively heads of the legal office and of the board of statutory auditors, on 27 September 2021 says: “In the past the financial statements of many football clubs have been a bit saved from these capital gains. We have made a fifth of the capital gains of previous years, we have not put in a business plan to make significant ones over the course of these years, so if we do then they will be positive surprises, let’s say, they will be totally healthy”. Healthy. However so far, as argued in various depositions, they are all assessments that can refer to a bad (not “healthy”) company policy based on capital gains from exchanges, i.e. settling the accounts at the price of a weight to be managed in the following years. Questionable on a managerial level but totally legal. It is a different matter if, to embellish the accounts and increase capital gains, the players are valued according to off-market quotations. Says Marco Re, former Chief Financial Officer, on 16 July 2021: “You think of someone like Arthur, who paid 75 million to get the Pjanic capital gain, now he also has to go under the knife … I mean, it was obvious, right? That it wasn’t one of that figure there ”.

OPERATIVES

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The issue had already emerged from the September 2021 interceptions of two important members of the technical area, Matteo Tognozzi (“They asked for capital gains, we didn’t make the transfer market… we bought players without paying them, the truth is this”) and Giovanni Manna (“Fabio, you had to make the capital gains and you made the capital gains”) by Giovanni Manna always September 2021. “You have activated a lawful method but you pushed it too much”, says Federico Cherubini at a dinner on 22 July 2021 with Stefano Bertola , former Chief Financial Officer, and here too the reference may be to an “unhealthy” managerial policy, but it is different when he adds, on the importance of creating players from whose transfers financial benefits can come: “If we go back to being Juve of a few years ago (…) we’ll have it at home, not artificial values”. And “artifacted values” is a good description when it comes to player ratings.

THE BLACK BOOK

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Federico Cherubini, sports director of Juventus, is also the author of the sheet, found in the searches, called the “Black Book FP”, which the Juventus manager explained to the investigators as follows: “These are the notes I made in March-April of 2021 when I went to discuss my contract renewal with Paratici (…). If I don’t clarify a number of things, which are what you find written here, I didn’t want to go on. In this document, I put the critical profiles in the relationship with Fabio”. Among these there is a clear note: “Excessive use of artificial capital gains” arrow “immediate benefit, depreciation charge”. Up to this point, the assessment can still be based on a non-“healthy” but legal managerial strategy. When he clarified with the Public Prosecutor’s Office on November 27, 2021, Cherubini explained: “In meetings held with the rest of the management, the fact was assessed that we had to move towards a different technical project and that recourse to capital gains should no longer be a feature of our management”. But to add an element is another sentence: “I have repeatedly complained to Fabio that the value we were giving to those players was not adequate”. Incorrect value. Whether it is the photo of a violation will be established by sports justice, but it is inevitable that the lights of the federal prosecutor’s office will come on.