Juventus under the guns of justice: what accounting fraud is the Turin club accused of?

Exaggerated capital gains on the sale of some players and deferred salaries: Juventus de Turin The courts accuse him of using accounting tricks to draw up accounts, and several former leaders should emerge in 2023.

Here are the highlights of the case as the club approves the 2021/2022 balance sheet on Tuesday with a deficit of around €240m before appointing a new board of directors on January 18, following the resignation of president Andrea Agnelli.

What are Juventus accused of?

prosecutor’s office Turin On 1 December, he asked that Andrea Agnelli and 11 other leaders be held accountable for alleged irregularities in the club’s financial management. Vecchia Signora’s patron since 2010 anticipated this new judicial stage by resigning three days earlier along with the entire board of directors, including Vice President Pavel Nedved.

A preliminary hearing is expected in early 2023 in the context of this case opened last year.

The most successful club in italian football (36 Scudetti), which is listed on the stock market, is accused, among other things, of manipulating the market by providing biased financial information to its investors during the period 2018-2021. In particular, the registration of “fictitious capital gains” in the sale of players and the use of “maneuvers” to defer payment of salaries during the Covid-19 pandemic.

prosecutor’s office Turin noted “important differences between the approved balance sheets and between what they should have been.”

juventus he has always maintained that he “acted in accordance with the laws and regulations governing financial communications”.

What is a “fictitious” capital gain?

At the center of the investigation is the practice of “false deals”, which are the cross-selling of players between two clubs for little or no fee.

juventus multiplied these transactions, for example, with Barcelona in 2020 for the cross-transfers of the Brazilian Artur Melo (72 million euros) and the Bosnian Miralem Pjanic (60 million euros). There was little money in circulation, but the effect on the accounts of the two clubs was immediate thanks to the notion of capital gains.

During the transfer, the player’s price is allocated to the accounts as a ransom for the duration of his contract. But a possible capital gain from the sale can be fixed immediately. With Pjanic, juventus This would result in a large capital gain of €43 million.

However, the significance of the accusation is that the club set exaggeratedly high values ​​for certain players at the time of the sale in order to increase capital gains and artificially mitigate their losses. According to documents seen by AFP, prosecutors estimate this so-called “fictitious” capital gain between 2018 and 2021 at around 155 million euros.

It remains a difficult, almost impossible task to establish an objective scale for a player’s worth: in April, the Italian sports court acquitted 11 persecuted teams, including juventusbut reopened the case in December.

What is the problem with wages?

Another supposed accounting trick that juventus refers to agreements made with players to defer certain salaries during the pandemic, in 2020 and again in 2021.

The club cited a “90m positive impact” on their accounts after announcing an agreement not to pay four months’ wages in the spring of 2020. with their players to pay three out of four monthly payments later.

juventus he would have made other private and secret agreements with his players, including Cristiano Ronaldo, who Juventus still owes around €20m, according to media reports.

What are the risks for Juventus?

According to the Italian agency Ansa, in addition to possible legal sanctions, the Italian Football Federation has launched a new investigation into wage “maneuvering”. This may cost the club a new process and possible sanctions (penalty or loss of points).

UEFA also announced on December 1 that it would launch an investigation into “alleged financial irregularities” juventus.

Vecchia Signora, having violated financial fair play accounting rules, closed a three-year plan to return to compliance with UEFA rules in August and risks a hefty fine and even exclusion from European competition if it does not comply with it. .

This tension is added to the open conflict that the Turin club has maintained with UEFA since the announcement in 2021 of the Superliga, a private competitive project that Juventus does not deny, defending it along with Real Madrid and Barcelona. (AFP – Anthony Lucas)