Capital gains Juventus, in the investigation also the remuneration of the prosecutors – Corriere.it

“Fictitious mandates” for the (practically discounted) contract renewals of Juventus players. This is one of the investigative chapters on which the men of the economic and financial police unit of the financial police of Turin are working, who in the last six months have analyzed the various items budgeted by the Juventus club. The prosecutor’s focus is not just on “unhealthy management of capital gains”, the latter used as an authentic “budget-saving” tool. But it also investigates alleged “opaque” operations – this is how the investigators define them – which have given rise to a suspicion: that in the negotiations for the purchase or sale of players, in addition to those for the contractual renewals of those who were firmly irremovable, special economic treatment was reserved, precisely to the prosecutors. Basically: fees that would not correspond to the services actually rendered, according to the investigative hypothesis.

In fact, the documentary material seized is vast from the yellow flames in the searches on Friday evening, as delegated by the prosecutors Mario Bendoni, Ciro Santoriello and the adjunct Marco Gianoglio: as part of an investigation that hypothesizes the crimes of false corporate communications and invoices for non-existent operations against Andrea Agnelli, the vice president Pavel Nedved, the former director of Fabio Paratici and a manager (and two former) of the finance area. Beyond these disputes, there is also the trend that concerns the agents, in fact.

Net of the purchase values ​​of the individual players or of the salary, the passage of an athlete from one team to another also involves the payment of an attorney, of course: the one who represents the champion – or the aspiring one – and who at the signing of the contract receives a commission based on a percentage calculated on the value of the deal. The “commissions” item is fully recorded in the financial statements. Just take a look at the amounts spent between 2018 and 2021, the years that ended under the lens of the Prosecutor’s Office, to understand that we are talking about large figures. According to calculations made by the Football Federation at the time, in 2019, 44.3 million euros had gone out of the coffers of Juventus to pay the “fees” of the prosecutors. Spending then reduced to 20.8 million in 2020, always at the top of the Italian teams.

Surely the presence on the lawn of superstars weighs heavily, starting with Cristiano Ronaldo, but up to a certain point if the “capitalized commission” of the agent of Emre Can was 15.8 million euros (in 2019). By moving the champions or presumed such, the agents have become the masters of the toy, inflating the costs of the ball out of all proportion: not only those of Juve. Even if in the bianconeri ledgers there are notable examples: for the passage of CR7 from Real to the Bianconeri, Jorge Mendes grossed 11.5 million of Euro; while Mino Raiola, in the four years (2012-2016) in which he protected the interests of Paul Pogba (now at Manchester United) he collected a total of 36.4 million. And precisely with regard to Ronaldo and his “famous card that should not theoretically exist” (on arrears), the prosecutors could listen to Cesare Gabasio, an expert in sports law and Juve general counsel since January, as a witness, with the task of reporting directly to President Agnelli.

The investigators are not suspicious of the fees for the grueling negotiations that go on for weeks during the transfer market, but those operations in which everything is already decided at the table, and where the signature is almost taken for granted. Under the lens of the Prosecutor’s Office there are also exchanges – “mirror” operations – between clubs at the same cost of the players with the aim of creating capital gains. And in the proceedings of the “Last Banner” investigation, on the extortion of ultras at the club (2018/19), a suspicion emerged from an interception between a player and a friend that the Digos policemen defined as “absolutely serious” (but never contested): that some players’ negotiations were “successful only upon payment of money in black”. To agents.