The Prisma investigation into Juventus is spreading to include six other Serie A clubs, who allegedly carried out a number of suspicious deals with the Old Lady.
Corriere della Sera details how the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office has forwarded a handful of documents from the Prisma investigation to six other prosecutors around the country, closely scrutinising various suspicious deals carried out with Juventus over the last few years.
Six Serie A clubs are involved in this – Atalanta, Udinese, Sampdoria, Sassuolo, Bologna and Cagliari – who will now be called to explain these suspicious deals, specifically deals and buy-back options that don’t correspond with what was reported in financial statements.
For Atalanta, four unreported buy-back agreements worth a total of €14.5m have been found, involving Federico Mattiello (€4m), Simone Muratore (€4m), Mattia Caldara (€3.5m) and Cristian Romero (€3m). None of these secret deals were reported to the FIGC and intercepted phone calls have already alluded to the suspicious nature of these agreements.
When speaking to Fabio Paratici, formerly of Juventus and now at Tottenham, Atalanta director Luca Percassi clearly knew the risks of these agreements, telling the Spurs sporting director during the talks for Romero’s move to North London that “I will never be able to take out that letter there, because if we go to court, it will come out that I made false accounting.”
The Cagliari magistrates will closely scrutinise the deal that saw Alberto Cerri move from Juventus to the Rossoblu, initially on a €1m loan before joining for €9m in July 2019. That deal saw the Old Lady generate capital gains of around €8m, and in parallel to the reported agreement was an email dated in July 2018 signed by the two clubs that guarantees the Bianconeri a buy-back clause.
Sassuolo’s role as a temporary base of operations for Juventus has also emerged, with the two deals in particular raising eyebrows being defender Merih Demiral and winger Hamed Junior Traore, two players that the Bianconeri asked the Neroverdi to sign, promising them a deal in the future.
The figures discovered by investigators are €4m for Demiral and €8.7m for Traore, who Juventus couldn’t sign because he didn’t hold an EU passport. The investigators have also discovered an agreement between Paratici and Sassuolo president Giovanni Carnevali, which details other secret deals between the clubs.
A few agreements between Sampdoria and Juventus are also being investigated, with the deals involving Emil Audero, Daouda Peeters and Erasmo Mule all be closely examined.
For Udinese, suspicions surround the deal for Rolando Mandragora, and Bologna’s involvement relates to Riccardo Orsolini.
With just over a month to go until Juventus’ preliminary hearing, scheduled for March 27, the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office are considering filing additional charges against the Old Lady.