We proceed by issuing invoices for non-existent operations
The president of Lazio Claudio Lotito and the sports manager Igli Tare are among the suspects in an investigation by the prosecutor of Tivoli into transfer market operations between Lazio and Salernitana between 2017 and 2021. The other suspects are Marco Moschini, Marco Cavaliere, Luciano Corradi, Ugo Marchetti and Angelo Mariano Fabiani.
The Guardia di Finanza, at the disposal of the Tivoli prosecutor’s office, carried out searches at the offices of Lazio and Salernitana.
The ongoing investigations, which the Public Prosecutor’s Office is responsible for, competent for the place where Lazio has its registered office, “are not connected with other investigations carried out by other Public Prosecutors’ Offices of which there has been news in the media – it is explained in a note – Proceed for the crimes referred to in articles 8 and 2 of Legislative Decree 74/2000 (issue of invoices for non-existent transactions and fraudulent declaration through the use of invoices for non-existent transactions), and for the crimes referred to in articles 2621 of the civil code and 2622 of the civil code (crimes of false corporate communications)”.
According to the magistrates of Tivoli, “with several executive acts of the same criminal design, Lotito Claudio as Chairman of the Management Board of “SS Lazio SpA”, Moschini as Managing Director, Cavaliere as Administrative Director, Tare as Sports Director of the Company, in competition with each other, making use of the sales invoices of the players sold by US Salernitana 1919 srl, the result of artificial evaluations compared to the market value of the individual player at the time of the sale, indicated fictitious passive elements in their annual tax returns (“inflated” costs), as well as showing the respective disproportionate purchase values of the players in the company financial statements, thus distorting the value of the sports club’s assets“.
The search decree provides for the “temporary seizure of servers, computers and devices/mobile phones used by the executives under investigation (excluding those for personal use by Senator Lotito), or to those who will prove to have materially dealt with the sales and their accounting and administrative records in various capacities”.
The measure was ordered “because there is well-founded reason to believe that all the documentation concerning the sale of players Sprocati, Casasola, Marino, Cicerelli, Novella, Morrone, Akpa Akpro (contracts and documentation – including banking documents – certifying the payment methods); that in particular, accounting and non-accounting documentation may be found relating to the same transfers, relating to pre-contractual negotiations, agreements and contracts signed between the two clubs, agreements between the clubs and individual players”.
The seizure of anything found in paper, analogue or electronic document form “appears necessary to reconstruct the process of the aforementioned transfers, the pre-contractual agreements between the parties, the payments actually made, any communications between the two companies, o those internal to each club, pertaining to the economic value of the players and the methods with which the official price and the methods of payment were arrived at; that the above documents are therefore essential to ascertain whether the sportsmen were actually paid , and for the amount formally declared, as well as also to exclude the existence of assumed fictitious capital gains and false invoicing with consequent crimes of false corporate communications”.
“With several executive acts of the same criminal design, Corradi as sole director of “US Salernitana 1919 srl” until 06.25.2021, Marchetti as director from 06.25.2021 to 01.13.2022, Fabiani as Director Sportsman of the club, in competition with each other, in order to achieve an unfair profit for themselves and for the company consisting in showing positive results of the year and allowing them to register for the championships, they exhibited in the company financial statements relating to the years 2017/2018, 2018 /2019, 2019/2020, 2020/2021, material facts not corresponding to the truth and in particular posting fictitious capital gains generated through artificial evaluations of the players sold, with the relative issue of false invoices, in the context of exchanges with the company ‘SS Lazio Spa'”, reads the search order.
Source-www.adnkronos.com