15 points gone
“Hammer judgment” probably costs Juve participation in the European Cup
01/20/2023 10:44 p.m
The offense is probably more than 100 million euros, the penalty for it is clear: Juventus Turin is found guilty of accounting fraud and loses more points than expected. For the Italian football record champions, the season will be over after the verdict.
Draconian penalty against Juventus Turin: The Italian football champions will be deducted 15 points in the current Serie A season for accounting fraud. This was decided by the sports court of the Italian association FIGC. The former series champion is said to have cheated on his balance sheets and thus had more money available for transfers – the sports judges even went further with the penalty than the nine points deduction demanded by the chief prosecutor Giuseppe Chinè. Juventus can appeal the verdict to the Italian Olympic Committee Coni.
If the penalty persists, the Turiners have little chance of landing in the championship on a place in the table that entitles them to participate in the European Cup competitions. The Italian media unanimously wrote of a “hammer verdict” on Friday evening.
In this case, it’s about fictitious player ratings. The Turiners are accused of having deliberately attributed false market values to some professionals in the past – in 2018, 2019 and 2020 alone, the club’s balance sheet is said to have been whitewashed by more than 100 million euros. The FIGC sports court had already acquitted Juve and other clubs because of these allegations – but the proceedings were resumed due to new findings from the public prosecutor’s office. The other clubs have now – unlike Juventus – been acquitted again.
Also penalties for the Juve bosses
In addition to the point deduction, the former club bosses were also punished individually. Ex-President Andrea Agnelli, for example, was banned from any activity in Italian football for two years and former Vice-President Pavel Nedved for eight months. Ex-CEO Fabio Paratici was even suspended for 30 months. The court will request that the ban be extended to European and international competitions. This could hit Paratici in particular, who has been sports director at Tottenham Hotspur in England since 2021. Agnelli and Nedved had already officially resigned this week anyway.
The allegation of fake player ratings is just one aspect for which Juventus has to answer in court. The former series champion is also accused of falsifying the balance sheets during the corona pandemic by providing false information about unpaid salaries. At the time, the players had officially agreed to forego part of their salaries as a sign of solidarity with the club, which lost a lot of income due to the lockdown and spectator restrictions. Those unpaid salaries were officially booked – but in a later step they are said to have been secretly paid back to the professionals. The Turin public prosecutor’s office is also investigating the case.