The investigation arose from a complaint from a Verona fan after the Bastoni-Duda case in January 2024. But in the file of the suspects there are only representatives of the refereeing world and no club
Inter and its managers are not involved in the investigation into the world of refereeing that is shaking Italian football. After two days of tension and controversy, qualified sources from the Milan Prosecutor’s Office are trying to clarify the scope of the investigation which pushed the designator Gianluca Rocchi to suspend himself together with the supervisor of the VAR activity, Andrea Gervasoni.
In the list of suspects only figures from the world of referees while “Inter and its managers are not under investigation” is the message. The matches that ended up in the sights of prosecutor Maurizio Ascione are four or five and do not in any way concern the 2025/2026 season, the current one in which the Nerazzurri club is racing towards winning the scudetto number 21 in its history.
Under the magistrate’s lens there would therefore only be the matches Inter-Verona (6 January 2024), Udinese-Parma (1 March 2025), Salernitana-Modena (8 March 2025), Bologna-Inter (20 April 2025) of Serie A and B plus Inter-Milan (23 April 2025) of the Italian Cup.
According to theHandle in the corridors of the Palace of Justice there is an atmosphere of tensionwhich seems linked to the management of the investigation by the prosecutor Ascione with respect to the top management of the office. A step that also concerns the phase of communication of developments: nothing formal and official was released, not on April 25, the day of the arrival of the notifications of the invitations to appear for Rocchi and Gervasoni, and not even in the following hours.
The origin of the investigation from the complaint of a Verona fan
And as the hours pass, the context in which the investigation was born also begins to emerge. Not from the complaint made by former assistant referee Domenico Rocca in May 2025 but even in the previous winter. Two years and four months of investigations originating from the protest of a Verona fan, furious at what he saw at San Siro on 6 January 2024. It is the day of the match between Inter and his Hellas, won by the Nerazzurri with a goal by Frattesi in the last minute spoiled by a clear foul by Bastoni on Duda which was not whistled on the pitch by referee Fabbri and not even seen in the Sala Var in Lissone by Nasca and Di I want.
The fan behind the investigation that is upsetting Italian football is called Michele Croce, a lawyer and former mayoral candidate in the Verona municipal elections. It is he who sends a complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office identifying the conditions for opening a file for sports fraud and it is he who is summoned by the prosecutor Maurizio Ascione who decides to act on the report.
Croce was moved by anger at that defeat: “To us it seemed like a fraud, rather than an error: like an omission of official acts. Law 401 on sports fraud provides for two criminal offences, i.e. corruption or that which determines a different sporting result. In this sense the crime seemed integrated, I wrote the complaint and filed it electronically with the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Milan. I spoke with the Guardia di Finanza, who then he collaborated with Ascione (the public prosecutor) and I then also spoke with him in Milan: it was July 2025 and I gave him some ideas”.
REFEREES INVESTIGATION: ALL THE NAMES IN THE FIGHTS OF THE PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE
From then on, as revealed by Sports Mediaset, Ascione begins to dig into the arbitration system. Dozens of referees interviewed, some registered in the register of suspects and others simply people informed of the facts. Months of work to work on the most discussed cases of the championship slow motion, according to what has been reconstructed, asking those directly involved to justify their choices and attitudes. The use of wiretaps, environmental or telephone, is also possible, foreseen for the crime of sports fraud which carries penalties of 2 to 6 years.
The complaint of the former referee assistant Domenico Rocca in May 2025 is based on this line, born from the complaint of the Veronese fan lawyer and strengthened by the interrogations continued in secret for months.archived by the sports justice system but remained public and collected by the magistrate.
Then came out into the open with the notification of the notice of guarantee for the designator Gianluca Rocchi. In this first phase there are 5 suspects: Rocchi, Gervasoni, Paterna, Nasca and Di Vuolo. However, alongside these names that are known, there should be a longer list, not yet notified or made public, also because some hypotheses of sports fraud are contested in competition with “multiple people”.
Article being updated
