The arrest of the now former chief prosecutor of the Italian Referees Association Rosario D’Onofrio, has caused shockwaves in Italian football with new reports suggesting he was already under house arrest when appointed to the role. The news broke yesterday with La Gazzetta dello Sport writing that D’Onofrio was among 42 people arrested as part of a trafficking ring in the Milan and Lombardy region. The ring stand accused of smuggling six tonnes of marijuana and hashish into the country.
FIGC President Gabriele Gravina commented on the bizarre turn of events yesterday, saying: “I am bewildered. One thing is certain, the FIGC will take all the necessary decisions to protect the reputation of the footballing world and the refereeing class itself.”
Italian football and finance site Calcio e Finanza report that The FIGC are now looking into how D’Onofrio’s appointment in March 2021 was possible given that, according to the records of the investigation, the man was already under house arrest, detained in 2020 (A sentence of 2 years and 8 months, 4 in prison) when in the midst of the Covid lockdown, “wearing a military uniform (…), he circulated around Lombardy to make deliveries of drugs.”
In short, they want to understand whether someone at the Hague carried out the correct verifications when D’Onofrio became a prosecutor. The Association pointed out in a press release that it had never received any communication from D’Onofrio about the arrest and that he was “the victim of a very serious and wilful omission of communications required by the Association’s Regulations.”
[Image from La Gazzetta dello Sport]
