Earthquake in the world of football with two different investigations that corner important names in Italian football such as the CEO of AC Milan Adrian Galliani, and the presidents of Lazio, Genoa and Bari Claudio Lotito, Enrico Preziosi and Gianluca Paparesta.
CRAC PARMA: GALLIANI ALSO INVESTIGATED
The accusation is heavy and is linked to the chaos that brought Parma from Serie A to the amateur league within a few months, leaving behind hundreds of creditors. The CEO of AC Milan Adriano Galliani has been entered in the register of suspects for complicity in bankruptcy regarding the crash of Parma. The news was reported by today's edition of the Gazzetta di Parma.
According to reports from the Emilian newspaper, the CEO of Milan ended up in the papers of the Parma judiciary regarding thePalette purchase made in the January-February 2015 repair market. According to the magistrates, the amount disbursed by the AC Milan club for the purchase of the Italian-Argentine defender (2,5 million euros) would have been decidedly lower than the market price which in that at the time it had the former headquarters of the ducals. By purchasing Paletta below cost, therefore, Galliani would thus have contributed to a "further impoverishment of the company's assets".
The response from the AC Milan club arrived shortly with a brief note on its official website in which it underlines "the perfect regularity of the operation and it is certain that the assessment of the competent magistrates will be identical". It should be underlined that a few months after the purchase, the defender has already changed his shirt again by moving to Atalanta in the summer.
TV RIGHTS AND ILLEGAL FINANCING: LOTITO, PREZIOSI AND PAPARESTA SUGGESTED
The other investigation that is shaking the world of Italian football is on the table of the Milan prosecutor's office which is working on three fronts. Everything seems to start from an episode that apparently has no ties to the world of football: last Friday's arrest in Lugano of the tax Andrea Baroni, partner of the 'Tax and Finance' (T&F). Baroni was arrested on charges of conspiracy to launder money resulting from tax evasion of his Italian clients. And among these customers there would be, among others, too MB, number one of the Infront Italy srl, the company that holds Italian football in hand, which deals with the television rights of Serie A, Serie B and the Italian Cup and which deals with the marketing rights of Milan, Lazio, Genoa and Sampdoria. And TV rights are the central theme of the investigations by the Milan prosecutor's office.
One of the strands of the investigation by the Milanese judges is related to tenders on TV rights for the three-year period 2015-2018. The crime, according to the Public Prosecutor's Office, is that of bid rigging and disturbing freedom of the auctions. Why? According to the prosecutor's hypothesis, the football clubs would have turned to Infront for the auction on TV rights which would have steered the tender in favor of Mediaset. Hence the searches in the offices of Infront, Mediaset and in the homes of key men of the two companies. Parallel to this affair, in May the Competition Guarantor opens an investigation to check the existence of "potentially restrictive conduct of competition carried out by the operators Sky, Rti (Mediaset) and Lega Calcio, as well as by the advisor Infront Italy which takes care of the aspects relating to the assignment of audiovisual rights".
But Infront's troubles don't end there. Because another part of the investigation is that relating to the hypothesis of obstacle to the supervisory activities of the Covisoc, the body responsible for checking the club's accounts and allowing them to register for the championship. And under the magnifying glass of the Milan prosecutor's office the accounts of Genoa e Bari which may have received funding from Infront. The MB company would have illegally financed Genoa and Bari to balance the accounts of the two companies and guarantee their registration in the A and B championships. Vital money for the two companies: 15 million euros for Genoa, made available by Riccardo Silva through Infront and managed by Andrea Baroni's T&F, and 460 thousand euros for Barineeded to pay players' salaries. This is why the names of Enrico Preziosi, president of Genoa, and Gianluca Paparesta, former referee and now president of Bari, appear in the prosecutor's register of suspects. To these two names is added that of Claudio Lotito by virtue of his role within the FIGC federal council. Meanwhile, Lotito's lawyer Gian Michele Gentile explained that he has not received any documents at the moment from the Milan prosecutor's office. “If the public prosecutor is investigating Lotito, he will inform Lotito that he is investigating him, he will invite him to appoint a defender and I will tell him whether he intends to be heard or not but we cannot move on the basis of press reports. The Milan prosecutor's office did not send any document. There is no procedural document that tells Lotito you are under investigation”.
