“Convinced that they have respected the laws” – Corriere.it

Juventus released a note on Tuesday afternoon in response to the notice of conclusion of the preliminary investigations received yesterday, Monday 24 October, regarding capital gains and the salary issue during the pandemic. The crimes alleged against the Bianconeri are false corporate communications (false accounting), manipulation, obstacle to supervision and false invoicing. The precautionary measure (house arrest) had been requested for Andrea Agnelli – rejected on 12 October by the investigating judge – and the registration of the under investigation by the CEO Maurizio Arrivabene.

The Juventus note states that the launch of the investigations had been communicated to the market by means of a press release dated 27 November 2021. Juventus remains convinced, also taking into account the legal and accounting investigations carried out by the Company with the help of its consultants and the legal and technical-accounting opinions acquired by the Company, to have operated in compliance with the laws and regulations governing the preparation of financial reports,

Juventus in its official communication also explains what is being challenged, that is to say that the accusatory hypotheses put forward by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in part modified with respect to the original prospects, refer to alleged crimes of forgery in corporate communications, false communications addressed to the market, obstacle to the exercise of public surveillance authorities (Consob , in the present case) and fraudulent declaration through the use of invoices for non-existent operations. Based on the summary information available to the state, the facts covered by the provision relate to the financial statements as at 30/6/2019, 30/6/2020 and 30/6/2021 and are related to operations improperly called “exchange” of rights to sports services of players and agreements for the reduction and integration of the remuneration of registered personnel.

In practice, the mechanism, already entered in numerous investigations, of capital gains is contested, the exchange of players with a supposedly artificially pumped value and which is forever difficult to prove with certainty since it is complicated to assign an absolute value to the players. In this case, there would be interceptions. Furthermore, the salaries of players officially canceled due to the Covid emergency and in reality only postponed in the form of non-existent benefits are under the magnifying glass.

That is for a certain number of athletes, the exchange values ​​would be decided in an arbitrary manner in order to meet the budgetary needs of the moment. And for the same reason they would have beenand devised the salary maneuvers for the 2019/2020 sports season and the subsequent 2020/2021: the players – many of whom have paraded in recent months in the Prosecutor’s Office as witnesses – would have renounced (due to the pandemic) to receive only one month instead of the four communicated. The evidence would be in private and secret documents found in offices outside the company.