A report in today’s Repubblica claims that Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis has been accused of false accounting, with the prosecutors office asking for a year of imprisonment. The case related back to the transfer of Emanuele Calaiò from Siena in 2013, with De Laurentiis accused of tax evasion to the tune of €8000.
De Laurentiis is not the only sports manager being investigated as Monza’s Adriano Galliani, football agent Alessandro Moggi and the Atalanta’s Antonio Percassi. The allegations all involve alleged false invoicing in the management of relations between clubs and football agents in the years between 2009 and 2014 and is currently being investigated.
The most severe sentence, two years and eight months of imprisonment, was requested for Alessandro Moggi, while for other presidents, however, the Prosecutor asked for absolution: among these are Lazio president Claudio Lotito and former president of Fiorentina, Andrea Della Valle.
An absolution request has also been put forward for all the players involved in the process including the Argentine striker Ezequiel Lavezzi while Calaiò himself has not been charged.
The newspaper writes:
The Prosecutor’s Office hypothesizes the crime of ‘using invoices relating to subjectively non-existent transactions’ for the mechanism by which the player’s agent, at the time of a sale, appeared in the capacity, deemed fictitious, of consultant to the company. In practice, while taking care of the athlete’s interests, he appeared for tax purposes as a collaborator of the club that bought the player. In this way, the company deducted the costs and deducted the VAT, the athlete pocketed the net salary, the agent collected his part and concluded the deal. The prosecutors office asked for sentences for the facts committed until 2011, not for those dating back to subsequent periods.”
The sentence is scheduled for February 2nd, 2023.
