The preliminary hearing of the Prisma Investigation involving Juventus is scheduled for tomorrow and it refers to the legal case opened by the Prosecutor of Turin over Juventus’ financial statements.
The Bianconeri are accused of false accountings, market manipulation and false corporate disclosures. More specifically, the Prosecutor believes that Juventus, between 2019 and 2021, have made use of several fictitious capital gains to cover some gaps in the books.
The Prosecutor calls these deals “mirror operations”, which means that Juventus swapped players with another club for an inflated value and without effectively moving money.
As per the false corporate disclosures, Juventus are accused of giving false informations about two different salary manoeuvres conducted in 2020.
On March 28th 2020, Juventus announced with an official statement to have reached an understanding with the players and the coach (who was Maurizio Sarri back then) that allowed the club to save €90 million while for the Prosecutor, the club in reality saved €20 million as players and coach agreed to forfeit only one of the four monthly salaries that were meant to be deducted.
As for the second salary manoeuvre, Juventus made a deal with 17 players to postpone some of their monthly salaries but for the Prosecutor, they have officially registered only nine deals in their books and in Lega Calcio, which means that eight players are likely to have received payments off-the-books.
Tomorrow’s preliminary hearing will be chaired by judge Marco Picco who will decide either to dismiss the case or go on with the trial, with the possibility to ask for further investigations.
Judge Picco will also rule if the Prosecutor of Turin will remain in charge of the investigations or if the case will be moved to another city’s prosecutor for territorial jurisdiction.
Another key date for Juventus is April 19th when they will know the outcome of their appeal against the 15-points deduction.
Andrea Agostinelli I GIFN
