The Turin prosecutor’s office has requested indictments of the former Juventus president Andrea Agnelli, ten other former board members including the Tottenham Hotspur director Fabio Paratici, and the club following an investigation into alleged false accounting.
The former vice-president Pavel Nedved and the CEO Maurizio Arrivabene — who left the club on Monday when Agnelli and the entire board of directors resigned — are also named, as is Paratici, the former Juventus director of sport, who joined Spurs in 2021 as managing director of football.
A date for the preliminary hearing to decide whether to indict and proceed to trial is expected to be announced in the next week.
Juventus maintain “the accounting treatment adopted in the contested financial statements falls within those allowed by applicable accounting principles,” and they have drawn that conclusion “on the basis of a solid set of opinions by leading legal and accounting professionals”.
In a lengthy statement issued by the club, they added: “Juventus remains convinced that it has always acted correctly and intends to assert its reasons and defend its corporate, economic and sporting interests in all forums.”
Prosecutors have been investigating since last year whether Juventus cashed in on illegal commissions from transfers and loans of players. The case is also exploring if investors were misled with invoices being issued for non-existent transactions to demonstrate income that in turn could be deemed false accounting.
The case involves player contracts, transfers and agent dealings between 2018 and 2020.
At the start of the pandemic, Juventus said 23 players agreed to reduce their salary for four months to help the club through the crisis. But prosecutors claim the players gave up only one month’s salary.
Turin prosecutors have also apparently discovered more secret payments to Cristiano Ronaldo, a Juventus player between 2018 and 2021, that were not reported by the club.
Juventus are listed on the Milan stock exchange, which also opens it to regulatory scrutiny by Italy’s market watchdog Consob. The club CFO, Stefano Cerrato, was caught on phone taps saying that if Consob questioned their moves, they would “razzle-dazzle” the regulators with fancy words, according to leaks to Italian media.
