There is no peace for Sampdoria. The managers of the old management end up in trouble for the capital gains made by exchanging players with Juventus, and the corporate crisis that brought it to the brink of bankruptcy before the arrival of the Radrizzani – Manfredi tandem cost the Sampdoria club 2 penalty points for non-payments of Irpef and VAT on employee salaries for the quarter January – March 2023. All on the same day.
The troubles of Massimo Ferreronow former owner of Sampdoria, they seem to never end. After the prosecutor’s office of Paola, in Calabria, also that of Genoa investigated the “Viperetta”. Accused of false corporate communications, issuing invoices for non-existent operations, defrauding the State, embezzlement. Behind a series of operations with Juventus from 2019 until 30 March 2023. With him I am the then vice president Antonio Romei and the then administrative director Alberto Bosco are also under investigation, the latter still a member of the club’s Board of Directors. The Guardia di Finanza of Genoa, coordinated by the prosecutor’s office, searched the club’s headquarters and acquired documentation. He also did so in the offices of Banca Sistema and Macquarie Bank, in Rome in the offices of Sace (a company of the public group Cassa depositi e prestiti), Mediocredito Centrale and the Institute for sports credit.
The investigation, which consists of three strands, starts from the papers sent by the Turin prosecutor who had investigated Juventus’ capital gains obtained through the “inflated” sales of various players. Through these artificial sales, seven in particular, even Sampdoria would have inflated its budgets. Among the “suspicious” transfers there is in particular that of goalkeeper Emil Audero, who passed from the bianconeri to the blucerchiati, and then the transfers from Samp to Juve of Daouda Peeters and Erasmo Mulè, in 2019. And the transfers from the Turin club to the Genoese one by Nicolò Francofonte, Matteo Stoppa and Erik Gerbi, and the transfer from Sampdoria to Juve by Giacomo Vrioni, which took place in 2020.
According to the investigators, coordinated by the assistant prosecutor Paola Calleri and the deputy Francesco Pinto, Sampdoria would have unduly received the so-called “Sace funds”, a guarantee and economic support instrument created by the State to compensate, at least in part, for the drop in turnover suffered by companies active in specific sectors during the Covid 19 pandemic. According to the prosecutors’ hypothesis, Sampdoria would not have been entitled to collect those funds, given that the budgets were not true. Finally, thanks to the papers sent by Paola’s prosecutor’s office, it was discovered that Ferrero would have used a part of those funds assisted by a state guarantee to repay his film companies.
According to the indictment, Sampdoria allegedly obtained 5 million in loans guaranteed by the Central Guarantee Fund for small and medium-sized enterprises, managed by Mediocredito Centrale, as well as 17 million in loans assisted by a public guarantee granted by Sace, disbursed by Banca Sistema and 40 million by Macquarie Bank. The investigators also targeted the loans obtained by the company from the sports credit institute for the redevelopment, among other things, of the team’s sports facilities in Bogliasco and the Ferraris stadium.