The hearing of the referees of the Nerazzurri club, Giorgio Schenone, will reveal what prosecutor Ascione’s dossier may contain. And it will also clarify what to expect from sports justice.
Piece by piece we try to put together the puzzle of the investigation that the Milan prosecutor, Maurizio Ascione, is conducting on the world of arbitration with the hypothesis of a crime of sports fraud and in particular the former referee Gianluca Rocchi. The investigation emerged last April 25th with the sending of two notices of investigation addressed to Rocchi himself and his right-hand man Andrea Gervasoni.
The Prosecutor’s Office’s activity has entered a new phase after having been given the green light to extend it for another six months. To search for what? What emerges is that the picture that Ascione is trying to complete by putting together testimonies and confirmations of some (how many?) interceptionsobtained over the course of four months in spring 2025, is the picture of a meeting that took place at San Siro on 2 April 2025 on the sidelines of the Italian Cup derby between Milan and Inter in which Giorgio Schenone would also have taken part.
He would be the famous “Giorgio” evoked in a phone call between Rocchi and Gervasoni which is on record. Club Referee Manager of Inter, man responsible for maintaining relations with the refereeing sector as per the regulations. Not, however, to move to influence his choices and designations as would have happened according to the thesis of the prosecutor Ascione who accused Rocchi of two extremely detailed charges: the “shielding” of the designation of the unwelcome Duties in the return semi-final with Milan to avoid having him in a possible Italian Cup final or in the Scudetto sprint with Napoli and the choice of Columbus for Bologna-Inter a few weeks later.
The crux of everything is here, even from a sporting point of view. This is why the hearing of Schenone, who is not under investigation and is heard as a person informed of the facts, becomes the moment of truth. The Prosecutor’s Office will ask him to account for that alleged meeting and will have to somehow discover at least part of the papers he has collected and which justify the hypothesis of the crime of sports fraud in collaboration with other people, even if unknown. A moment of clarity that will serve to have a clearer picture of the trend that most interests public opinion also due to the potential repercussions on the level of sports justice.
From what emerged from the first round of hearings of the prosecutor Ascione, among these also Riccardo Pinzani who last season was the person chosen by the FIGC and AIA to maintain relations with the clubs, their contacts to complain about refereeing directions, protest and ask for clarifications were frequent. It is not surprising for those who know how the ecosystem of the Italian championship works, but iThe distinction is evident from both a criminal and a sporting point of view and is what the Milan Prosecutor’s Office is trying to interpret in the right way: whether it was just a widespread practice of managing refereeing work (and this also includes the designator’s choice to keep away for a while referees not liked by the various teams) or an attempt to influence the designations to have an advantage. Prosecutor Ascione focused on Inter and the alleged meeting on 2 April 2025. After Schenone’s hearing everything will be clearer.
It is equally clear, however, that the FIGC Prosecutor’s Office will have to wait before receiving the papers from its colleagues in Milan. The reason is easy to read: the investigation is far from clear and the magistrates cannot (and do not want) to provide the documents at the risk of burning it. Also because to date the picture is incomplete. A few weeks or months will pass before sending from Milan to Rome and only then Giuseppe Chiné will be able to evaluate what is important from a sporting point of view – where it takes less than the criminal one to be sent to trial – and what, however, has no weight.
