A wiretapped phone call between Juventus directors Federico Cherubini and Stefano Bertola, where they discussed the swap deal involving Luca Pellegrini and Leonardo Spinazzola, has put Roma in trouble in the capital gains case.
Il Messaggero details how the Bianconeri pair discussed the swap deal in a phone call on July 22 2021, which investigators believe shows evidence of malicious intent to increase capital gains for both clubs.
Cherubini told Bertola: “Let’s stop this haemorrhaging… that is, you have activated a lawful way, but you have pushed it too far, because then you have invented.
“It’s a very long queue… and that led you to do some operations… that otherwise in a normal context you cannot do… Spinazzola-Pellegrini, you can’t do that!”
The Juventus pair were discussing the deal that saw Spinazzola sold to Roma for €29.5m on June 30 2019, which allowed the club to record a capital gain of €25,898,000. This transaction took place at the same time as Juventus’ purchase of Pellegrini from the Giallorossi for €22m.
Cherubini continued to vent his frustration over this deal: “You’ve gone off the rails! Because when they tell me Pellegrini… ‘How much does Pellegrini earn?’, ‘€2m and 2’, ‘are you stupid?’.
“We, the Spinazzola-Pellegrini deal… we give Spinazzola, who has €800,000 under contract, we sign Pellegrini for €2m and 2, with a delta of €7m in our favour that we have eaten it up in exit incentives in two years.”
The Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office could soon forward the investigation documents to the FIGC prosecutor Giuseppe Chine, who would like to include Lazio’s file as well in a second capital gains case linked to ‘suspicious partnerships’ between clubs.