the reasons for the sentence. «Serious and prolonged offence, proven intentionality» – Corriere.it

The 36 pages of reasons for the sentence of the FIGC Court of Appeal which penalized Juventus by 15 points in the current season and banned 11 managers have arrived. The case, as known, is that of the use of so-called artificial capital gains to adjust balance sheets. The sentence had raised two questions: 1) why Juventus had been convicted while all the other teams involved were acquitted; 2) because a penalty of 15 points in the standings had been chosen (prosecutor Chin had asked for 9). Let’s see how we get there. The reasons focus on the violation of article 4, the one concerning sporting loyalty: Juve has committed a sporting disciplinary offense, taking into account the seriousness and the repeated and prolonged nature of the violation, it is read. A fraudulent system, it adds.

Intentionality: documents with confessional value

The papers of the Prisma investigation by the Turin prosecutor’s office are decisive

: which highlighted intentionality underlying the alteration of the transfer operations and the related values. On the merits, Juve was deemed to have committed the offence, given the documentation from the club’s managers with confessional value and from the related manuscripts, the unequivocal interceptions and further evidence relating to interventions to hide documents or even manipulators of invoices.

The black book of FP

First of all, the Black Book of FP (Fabio Paratici) written by Cherubini and defined as disturbing is mentioned. It is discovered in the motivations that the Book had been prepared by Cherubini as document to be used in the negotiation phase of your contract renewal and from which differences of views can be inferred. Not only. Then reference is made to telephone interceptions, such as that of 6 September 2021 in which Andrea Agnelli and John Elkann refer to a series of behaviors that lead one to think that the sports management had expanded, with a series of operations that Agnelli traces back to excessive use of the capital gains instrument. Or again when Agnelli speaking with Arrivabene says the machine was flooded with depreciation and above all the shit because all the shit underneath that cannot be said.

Unreliable balance sheets, the regularity of competitions must be guaranteed

The conclusion drawn from this is that Juventus’ financial statements are not reliable. The rationale of the entire administrative-accounting system of professional football clubs has therefore been violated, which is that of guaranteeing the regularity of competitions…. The key point, as mentioned, is the violation of the principle of loyalty on which the entire sports system is based.

Why yes to the revocation for Juve

In order, let’s start with the preliminary questions: because the request to revoke the sentence that had already acquitted Juventus (with eight other clubs) for the same crimes was accepted. How to overcome the legal principle of ne bis in idem, according to which one cannot be judged twice for the same facts, was one of the most challenging legal issues for the judges. But the papers of the criminal investigation (the impressive amount of documents received from the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Turin) they put faced with a radically different picture of the facts. The new fact, we continue, is that previously the unveiling of the underlying intentionality to the alteration of the transfer operations and the relative values, with the presence of a fraudulent system departure (at least on the sporting level) that the Federal Court had not been able to know. These new facts, which if known would have led to a different decision, include the case of Juventus as foreseen by article 63 of the sports justice code which permitsprecisely, the revocation, due to the characteristics of diversity and autonomy that characterize it. In short, the specificity of sports justice wins, where it is not possible to find the same identical protections of the criminal proceeding. And where even an acquittal obtained for two levels of judgment, if consequent to the lack of knowledge of facts instead decisive for a possible conviction, subject to the revocation judgment. This is because the sports legislator was motivated by the desire to remove decisions which, for one of the specific cases indicated, appear, in substance, to distort the sense of justice.

Because the other clubs have been dissolved

But in the new facts that have arisen – the judges write in the reasons – there is no specific demonstrative evidence for the other companies to support the accusation and even less does it seem possible to argue that there has been a systematic alteration of several balance sheets. Towards the other clubs, in short, nothing more was found in the Turin papers: In the documentation acquired by the federal prosecutor, unlike what happened for FC Juventus SpA, there is no specific demonstrative evidence to effectively support the accusation against the companies UC Sampdoria, FC Pro Vercelli 1892, Genoa CFC, Parma Calcio 1913, Pisa Sporting Club, Empoli FC, Novara Calcio and Delfino Pescara 1936. And so less does it appear possible to argue that there has been (as claimed in the referral) a systematic alteration of several financial statements.

The defense of Juventus had highlighted, in his memoirs, how the club had been penalized for a provision which, the Federal Court had said, when it had acquitted it

Why the -15 and not the -9

The other point was the quantification of the penalty inflicted on Juventus in 15 points and not 9 as requested by the prosecution. Taking into account the precedents that concerned accounting alterations that lasted for several financial years or of significant size and intensity (which in the past led to penalties of fluctuating value but, in some cases, even significant ones), it is deemed necessary to recalculate the sanction with respect to the requests of the Federal prosecutor’s office. The Federal Court is called to the difficult task of also acting as a judge of equity and must therefore actually proportion the sanction to the gravity of the facts scrutinized, also being able to aggravate the sanction requested by the federal prosecutor. In particular, it reads, the sanction must also be proportionate the inevitable alteration of the resulting sporting result.

The appeal

Now the Turin club will have 30 days available to appeal to the Coni Guarantee College which judges only on issues of legitimacy and not of merit.

(article being updated)