The prosecution accuses: “Lotito saved Salernitana with Lazio’s money”

The Tivoli prosecutor’s office investigates Forza Italia senator Claudio Lotito and six other managers and exes of SS Lazio for false invoices. Among these is the former sports director, Igli Tare. Under the lens of the magistrates, he writes today Daily factthere are the purchases of seven players from Salernitana, also owned by Lotito.

The investigation stems from a report from Bank of Italy dating back to November 3, 2021. At the time, Lotito and Mezzaroma merged their stake into a trust called “Salernitana 2021”. Who has the task of finding a buyer for the company that has just been promoted to Serie A. The inspectors of via Nazionale realize that Lotito and Mezzaroma are already subjected to criminal investigations. And they warn the Guardia di Finanza. It is necessary to verify that no sums of money resulting from offenses have ended up in the trust.

The results converged in a report dated 28 April 2022. Among the borderline cases is that of the forward Mattia Sprocati, who moved from Pro Vercelli to Salernitana in 2017 for 110 thousand euros and in June 2018, after a season with 12 goals in Serie B, sold to Lazio for 3,233,498 and immediately transferred to Parma: Salernitana will close the financial statements with a profit of 1,129,586 euros and, writes the Gdf, «the sale to Ss Lazio Spa (…) has contributed significantly to realization of this positive result.

Among the decisive transfers also that of Tiago Casasola. Taken from Alessandria for 100 thousand euros at the beginning of 2018, Salernitana sells him to Lazio for 3 million: in the biancoceleste he “plays” only one season without seeing the pitch. The same goes for the Under 20s Andrea Marino, Emanuele Cicerelli, Mattia Novella and Biagio Morrone, who earn 9.8 million and make it possible to close the balance sheet with a profit of 610,565 euros.

Finally, there is the case of the Ivorian midfielder Jean-Daniel Akpa-Akpro, whom Lazio buys from Salernitana for 13.4 million. In total, the sum obtained by Salernitana for these players is 29.2 million euros. Transfers that also made the new owner, Danilo Iervolino, suspicious, who in the first meeting of 13 January 2022, “distanced himself from the previous management” with a statement in the minutes.

Lazio’s lawyers wanted to demonstrate the regularity of the purchases by depositing the transfers with the Prosecutor’s Office. And the tiburtini prosecutors, on May 15, 202, replied to a technical instance of the defense that “still no documentation relating to the hypotheses of the issue and use of false invoices (…) has been transmitted in the subsequent reports”. There is a suspicion, so much so that the investigators point out that “the assemblies and the approvals of the financial statements of the Campania sports club were held at the SS Lazio headquarters without any apparent need” and for this reason the prosecutors do not exclude that “these tax documents have been created right in Formello».