Juventus deny any wrongdoing in ‘unfounded’ investigation

Juventus have released a statement assuring they have done nothing wrong and the reported financial irregularities ‘fall within those allowed by applicable accounting principles.’

The entire Board of Directors resigned abruptly on Monday evening, including President Andrea Agnelli, reportedly so they could take some of the legal pressure off the club in case of potential arrests.

The issues at stake are the so-called inflated transfer fees to increase capital gains and the use of separate secret contracts paying player salaries under the table.

Juventus released another statement this afternoon insisting they will be vindicated during the latest stage of the investigation, both at a sporting and purely legal level.

This statement started out ‘in reference to what was reported in some media’ over the ‘presumed non-conformity’ of their finances from July 2021 to October 2022.

The Bianconeri team, of lawyers and accountants “continued the rigorous and scrupulous evaluation” of all the accounts for 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22.

“Based on a solid set of opinions from professional lawyers and accountants, the Juventus board unanimously concluded that the accounting treatment adopted falls within those allowed by applicable accounting principles.”

Juventus insist the accusations put forward by the authorities “are unfounded” and point out that even then the accusation “never mentioned financial fraud.”

The club is confident it will be exonerated, just as it was for the capital gains investigation only a few weeks ago.

In that case, the entire situation fell apart because it is impossible to calculate how much a player is worth, other than what the two clubs agree as a transfer fee.

When it comes to the payment of wages after announcing the players had agreed to forego that money, this might be trickier for Juventus to resolve.

With reference to what has been reported by some media – fully respecting the Judicial Authorities and the Market Regulators, and while reiterating the utmost confidence in the Judiciary – JFC wishes to clarify the following.

Following the commencement of the Consob proceeding for ascertaining alleged accounting non-conformities (July 2021), which was concluded on 19 October 2022, with the outcomes published by Juventus in its two press releases dated 21 October and 20 November 2022, and following the acquisition of the copies of the investigation documents (following the receipt of the notice of conclusion of preliminary investigations on 24 October 2022), Juventus’ corporate bodies continued the process of a rigorous and scrupulous evaluation of all accounting allegations raised with regard to Juventus’ financial statements (2019/2020 and 2020/2021 and, as a result, 2021/2022).

On the basis of a solid set of opinions by leading legal and accounting professionals, the board of Juventus has come, united, to the unanimous conclusion, shared by all nine members of the board in office on the 28 November 2022, that:

· the accounting treatment adopted in the contested financial statements falls within those allowed by applicable accounting principles;

· the allegations of the Public Prosecutor’s Office do not appear to be substantiated and do not appear, moreover, to be aligned, both as to the assumptions and as to the conclusions, with the remarks contained in Consob’s resolution of 19 October 2022; in fact, the Public Prosecutor’s Office maintains the artificiality of the capital gains and the fictitiousness of the salary reductions, while Consob challenges a considerably lower value of capital gains, moreover without any mention of false accounting, and does not dispute the legal effectiveness of the salary reductions, nor, with specific regard to the so-called 2020/2021 “salary maneuver”, the legally non-binding nature of the so-called supplementary agreements that were being negotiated in April and May 2021;

· the correction of the financial statements (i.e., restatement), limited to the so-called 2020 and 2021 “salary manoeuvres”, was decided in line with the adoption of a perspective of accentuated and extreme prudence, and has accounting effects which are deemed, also with the aid of independent experts, to be not material, in particular with regard to shareholders’ equity for the financial years ended 30 June 2022;

· finally, Juventus trusts that, precisely because of the deemed absence of any alteration of the contested financial statements, the conclusions of the sporting authorities (which have already expressed themselves in favor of Juventus, with regard to the issue of capital gains) will not change: in the absence of any accounting alteration, any sporting sanction would be completely unfounded.

Juventus F.C. remains convinced that it has always acted correctly and intends to assert its reasons and defend its corporate, economic and sporting interests in all forums.