La Gazzetta Dello Sport reports wiretapping between Juventus directors Stefano Bertola and Federico Cherubini: ‘This is as bad as Calciopoli, but we created it.’
The conversation between Juventus sporting director Cherubini and Bertola, the former financial director of the club, reportedly occurred on July 22, 2021, at a restaurant in Turin and was recorded by investigators looking into Juventus’ finances.
“This is as bad as Calciopoli, but we created it,” said Bertola, according to the report.
Cherubini allegedly admitted that Fabio Paratici, the former Juventus sporting director pushed a ‘lawful method too far’ referring to inflated transfer values registered by the club to balance the books.
This information has been leaked out by police because there is no jury system in Italy, it’s just judges. In the UK or US, this kind of evidence in the mainstream would be considered damaging to any trial.
The Turin Prosecutor believes the Bianconeri manipulated three financial statements with inflated transfer values and hiding payments to footballers after announcing that their players would give up to four months’ salaries during the peak of the COVID pandemic.
Gazzetta also reports that current CFO Stefano Cerrato discussed some suspicious transfers, including swap deals between Marley Aké and Franco Tongya and Miralem Pjanic and Arthur, with a financial auditor of the club, saying that he would have somehow tricked CONSOB, the Italian body in charge of supervising activities in the stock exchange market.
Investigators believe that inflated transfer values helped the club balance the books.
According to the latest reports, 11 individuals and Juventus as a club will be recommended for a trial over financial irregularities, including Andrea Agnelli, Pavel Nedved and Tottenham director Fabio Paratici.