"I admit it, I'm a huge Napoli fan and I hate Juventus."
Ciro Santoriello was explaining to an audience of jurists, in 2019, the reason why he had recently 'exonerated' the Old Lady, together with the president Andrea Agnelli, from a potential charge for false accounting.
But those few joking words, immortalized in a 39-second video that went viral with lightning speed, sparked the social indignation of Juventus supporters because Santoriello, a magistrate in service in Turin, is today one of the three prosecutors in the capital gains case, which resulted in a series of requests for indictment and, on the football front, in a -15 in the standings for the team inflicted by the FIGC Court of Appeal.
He is a crackle of posts with conspiracy allusions and direct accusations of bias and anti-Juventus prejudice,
Andrea Abodi
who tweets: "I have seen, listened to and reported, in compliance with the roles, for the appropriate checks and evaluations", while the deputy Simona Loizzo (Lega) invites us to "remove the investigation from Santoriello".
The report reached the Keeper of Seals.
Prosecutor Prisma: 'I support Napoli and hate Juventus'
Striscia la Notizia' parked a giant 'Tapiro' in front of the subalpine Palace of Justice
.
And anti-Juventus phrases published in recent years on social media by two members of the Coni Guarantee College (Vincenzo Cesaro and Pier Giorgio Maffezzoli) have also begun to circulate on the web, to which Juventus appealed against the Court's ruling federal appellate.
Piero Sandulli is vice president of the same guarantee panel, whose statements in recent days on the Juve case have brought Coni to intervene, saying that the judge was speaking in a personal capacity.
In political circles, however, it would not mind that Sandulli resigned
.
A very made in Italy storm, because in England things go differently: with City finished on the stand, the chairman of the Premier League commission who will judge the Manchester club is a member of Arsenal, among the opposing teams.
But no fans have arisen at the moment.
Paradoxically, one of the Juventus lawyers Luigi Chiappero intervenes in defense of Santoriello, who defines him as "a cultured magistrate who has never confused football with the law".
Santoriello was almost unknown to the general public. In the planet justice, however, he is known and respected
.
In the prosecutor's office in Turin he coordinated the pool on economic crimes for years (now he is under the District Anti-Mafia Directorate).
He has collaborated with various universities and has signed about ten appreciated monographs on legal topics.
His football faith did not prevent him from asking for the dismissal of a proceeding opened in 2017. And he even went so far as to write that it was "far from correct to claim that in criminal proceedings" in the Calciopoli trials it had already been "ascertained in undisputed and definitive manner the civil liability of Juventus for the sporting fraud committed by its managers".
The investigation was born after the complaint of a member company of Bologna.
The initial thesis was that Juventus, in the light of the legal proceedings in Rome and Naples, should have entered the sums in the balance sheet, in a special item, to deal with any compensation.
Prosecutor Santoriello, after a long examination of the legislation, concluded that it was not necessary.
End of the story.
In 2019 he spoke about the case at the conference "The organizational model and football clubs: the prevention of offenses between criminal justice and sports justice" which was held in Milan in the Sala Sforza of the Spazio Chiossetto.
In a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, he exchanged a few good-natured jokes with the other speakers to the laughter of the audience.
The full video of the conference lasts 4 and a half hours.
Until this morning on Youtube (after almost four years) it had about 600 views.
Yesterday the version reduced to 39 seconds appeared.
The authorship of the tweet that unleashed the storm was attributed to the youtuber Antonello 'Lello' Pira, 34, who has a channel, Colpo Gobbo, which is very popular with Juventus fans.
