Inter investigation, 'system without money passages'

 A "system", not only used by Inter but widespread in the Italian transfer market, based on the so-called "clearing house" and on the exchanges of players between two teams that often take place without passing of money or with "frozen" money movements and then carried out only at a later time. This is one of the main aspects on which the Milanese investigation for false accounting on the Nerazzurri club is focusing, with at the center suspicious capital gains on the sales of players, which two days ago led to a series of document acquisitions, but also of email, at the headquarters of the company led by Steven Zhang and in Lega Calcio, where the contracts are deposited.

    According to what is reported, only in Italy, among other things, is there this "peculiar" mechanism of the "clearing house" which allows - during the exchange of players between two teams, which can precisely generate capital gains in the balance sheets, or the increase in revenues - not to move money and if anything to postpone the passage of money. And this is precisely a key theme of the investigation, conducted by the Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Gdf and coordinated by the adjunct Maurizio Romanelli and by the prosecutors Giovanna Cavalleri and Giovanni Polizzi, because investigators and investigators will have to evaluate how this has affected the financial statements and whether it may have created other profiles of alleged irregularities, including fiscal ones.

    While the Fiamme Gialle are analyzing the documents collected, comparing them with those already acquired, particular attention in the file is placed on contracts with a "buy back" clause, which are also widespread in the transfer market, not only in Italy in this case: a company sells a player generating a capital gain for that year, keeping the price of the 'tag' high, and then buys it back the following year at a price higher than the one at which he sold it, amortizing the costs and spreading them over several years. At the same time, the other team, which buys and then resells, also realizes a capital gain.

    In the Milanese investigation, which in the coming weeks could lead to registrations in the register of suspects also as collateral, we started by digging into a dozen transactions, including exchanges, sales, loans, budgeted by Inter between 2017 and 2019 for approximately 90 million euros of capital gains. And now the insights will concern those in which the players would have been evaluated for figures that seem too "disproportionate" to the actual values.

    Growing revenues with alleged fictitious capital gains could have served, according to the hypothesis under consideration, to beautify the balance sheets and allow Inter to return to the parameters of "financial fair play" and take part in European competitions.

Among the cases under the investigators' lens are those of the goalkeeper Ionut Radu (7.7 million capital gain) and the striker Andrea Pinamonti (19 million capital gain), exchanged between Genoa and Inter in two years, but also of the defender Zinho Vanheusden or other low-mid-range players, especially the Primavera.