Oimnhen case: De Laurentiis and Napoli will go to trial for false accounting. The Gup decided this while for sports justice there was not enough evidence to institute a new proceeding…
Aurelio De Laurentiis and Napoli will go to trial for false accounting in relation to the Osimhen and Manolas transfer operations. This was decided by the Rome preliminary hearing judge, thus accepting the request of the Prosecutor’s Office which had requested the indictment of the owner of the Neapolitan club, his right-hand man Andrea Chiavelli and the club. The reference is to the financial statements for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021.
A matter on which the sports justice system decided not to intervene even in the presence of the documents that led the Rome Prosecutor’s Office to the request, then accepted by the Gup, to prepare a trial. Embarrassing situation. The FIGC’s chief of investigators, Giuseppe Chiné, in the spring allowed the thirty days from receipt of the cards to pass without asking for the reopening of the proceedings which had been archived in 2022 together with those of many other companies and members.
Then there was the storm over Juventus, for which the documents sent by the Turin Prosecutor’s Office were considered relevant to request and obtain the revocation of the sporting trial. Now the indictment for De Laurentiis and Napoli with the sports justice system which will no longer be able to move but which has certified the non-punishability of conduct which, according to the Gup of Rome, deserves an in-depth procedural investigation.
OSIMHEN DEAL, THE CHATS BETWEEN NAPOLI MANAGERS
The Osimhen and Manolas affairs, that’s what happened
The investigation deals with two market coups for Napoli at the time. One concerns the Greek defender Kostas Manolas, who had made over 200 appearances for Roma, purchased from Napoli for 36 million euros in June 2019. Nominally the value of the termination clause exercised on the last useful date of the session for Roma to be able to settle the accounts by realizing a capital gain sufficient (31 million) for their needs. In the same hours, Napoli had then sold the 1997-born midfielder Amadou Diawara to Roma, valued at 21 million euros with a positive impact on the budget of over 19 million.
The most famous case is, however, that of the Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen. Napoli bought him in 2020 from the French team Lille for a sum of around 71 million euros, part of which was covered by the transfers to the French of goalkeeper Karnezis (valued at 4.8 million) and three players who were in Napoli’s Primavera team at the time: Ciro Palmieri (7 million), Claudio Manzi (4) and Luigi Liguori (4). The last three never ended up at Lille but immediately returned to Italy to pursue second-rate careers. For the Rome Prosecutor’s Office, a case of fictitious capital gain with repercussions on the writing of the budget.
