Judicial police from the Grand Duchy in Luxemburg reportedly seized paperwork from the offices of former Milan owners, Elliott Capital. The searches reportedly took place at the offices of Project Redblack, a holding company that previously owned the Rossoneri, and were requested by Milan prosecutors Giovanni Polizzi and Giovanna Cavalleri.
The sale of the club from Elliott Capital to Redbird last year is under investigation with Italy’s financial police reviewing the transfer of the club between the two funds.
Il Corriere della Sera report that there are allegations of ‘misuse of corporate assets’ and ‘fraudulent bankruptcy’ against three directors of the company: they are Elliott manager Jean-Marc McLean and local professionals Daniela Italia and Victor Schuh. The subject of the seizure was all paper and digital documents (accounting, banking, board minutes, etc.) that can be traced back to the management of the sale and purchase of Milan and the use of the sum collected from the sale. So far, its suggested that the crimes at center of the investigation were embezzlement and obstruction of supervision.
According to the report (which is unconfirmed at the moment), documents have also been acquired at Intertrust, the consulting group that handles the administration of dozens of U.S. fund companies, including Project Redblack. Similar search and seizure orders were also reportedly executed at Rossoneri Sport, which also resides in the Grand Duchy, and is the company that owned 99.9 percent of Milan and materially collected the €1.12 billion from RedBird. Project Redblack is the holding company that, in turn, controls the Rossoneri.
The Milan criminal investigation arose (and then developed independently) from a complaint by Salvatore Cerchione and Gianluca D’Avanzo’s from Blue Skye, a minority shareholder (4.3 percent) in Project Redblack, who believe that they were damaged by the sale to RedBird “which took place in such a way as to prejudice its right to credit.” In recent days, Corriere has reported on Blue Skye’s application to the Milan Bankruptcy Court to have the two Luxembourg companies declared insolvent. Among other things, the proceedings at the bankruptcy court may have been the technical incipit that allowed the fraudulent bankruptcy to be hypothesized. The papers in that proceeding had revealed that money and credits of more than €1 billion, financial flows connected to the sale and purchase of Milan, had been flowed into the Cayman Islands and Delaware by Project Redblack and Rossoneri Sport just 24 hours after the Milan Guardia di Finanza raid on January 26, that is, the day after the investigation into the sale of Milan from Paul Singer’s Elliott fund to RedBird emerged in public.
