Juventus has revived its darkest period and the Italian Football Court of Appeals has imposed a very harsh sanction of 15 points in the current Serie A championship for the case of capital gains.
The Turin club altered its accounts through accounting tricks that attributed to players that it exchanged with other clubs a value above the market.
The capital gains, then, were fictitious and fraudulent.
For this reason, several managers have also been sanctioned, including the one who was president of the club until a few weeks ago, Andrea Agnelli.
The Turin club had been accused along with other clubs, such as Napoli, of increasing the market value of players to generate more income by transferring them, thus achieving unrealistic capital gains.
The tax ruse -used in 22 operations- allowed the club fictitious capital gains in the 20-21 financial year and the 2021 quarterly. In this way, it was able to reduce losses, not recapitalize and, incidentally, reinforce the team with signings such as by Cristiano Ronaldo.
One of the most important operations was carried out with FC Barcelona and consisted of exchanging Pjanic for the Brazilian Arthur, which also served to balance the accounts of the Catalan club.
Another of the movements being investigated is the exchange of Cancelo for Danilo with Manchester City, which provided the Turinese with a capital gain of about 30 million euros.
But the operations were also carried out with Italian clubs.
In 2021, for example, Nicolò Rovella went from Genoa to Juventus for 18 million euros.
But from the Liguria club Manolo Portanova and Elia Petrelli arrived for 10 and eight million, respectively.
A play that gave a capital gain of 18 million to each team.
La Vecchia Signora was so far third in the table, with 37 points.
But the sanction will liquidate any aspiration in the championship with a stroke of the pen and will radically move it away from the European positions in the standings.
In fact, they will now have 22 points and will be tied with Bologna and Empoli in 11th position.
In addition to sanctions to the club, there is also punishment for the managers.
The court has ruled two and a half years of disqualification for sports director Fabio Paratici (today at Tottenham);
two years for former president Andrea Agnelli and eight months for Pavel Nedved, the club's manager.
Juventus has 30 days to appeal to the Italian Olympic Committee.
But the sanction cannot be reduced: only annulled or confirmed.
The practice has been quite common in European football of late.
But, for now, only Italy has investigated and sanctioned it.
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