Gianluigi Buffon cannot understand why Juventus are facing a points penalty and civil action over artificially inflated transfer fees. ‘It seems like quite a general thing, all clubs work with capital gains.’
The Bianconeri are accused of systematically exaggerating the transfer fees agreed with other clubs, especially in swap deals, to make it seem as if they were moving around far more valuable assets.
That in turn allowed them to balance the books by showing capital gains on these largely youth players who were sold on at a large profit.
“I am honestly surprised, even though I only have a very superficial understanding of the situation,” said Parma goalkeeper Buffon at the Il Foglio a San Siro event.
“I don’t want to get too far into it, at the risk of saying something stupid, but it seems like quite a general thing. I think more or less all clubs work with capital gains. It’s not up to me to judge, anyway.”
The initial investigation had cleared all 11 clubs involved, including Napoli and Sampdoria, but only Juventus had their verdict changed to guilty because of new evidence.
That was provided in the form of wiretapped telephone conversations by the Prisma investigation, which is running in parallel in the civil courts to the sporting justice system.
If Juventus are found guilty of inflating transfer fees to boost capital gains, they had to do it in conjunction with other clubs, so this case could have a knock-on effect for future investigations.