All of the members of the board of directors of Juventus Turin, including its president Andrea Agnelli, presented their program, announced Monday the Italian club immersed in sporting, financial and legal problems. General manager Maurizio Arrivabene has been tasked with staying in place and handling day-to-day business until a new board is formed, the club said in a statement.
The next general meeting is scheduled for January 18. The council, not part of Andrea Agnelli and its vice-president Pavel Nedved, resigned « considering the centrality and relevance of the pending legal and technical-accounting issues », an allusion to the investigation that the Italian justice has been carrying out since the more you on.
The Turin public prosecutor’s office is interested in the practice, which Juve has multiplied, of « false exchanges » of players: cross-sales with other clubs, without exchanging money but allowing to register capital gains in the accounts.
READ ALSO : Juve: a « super » European fiasco
The magistrates have calculated these « fictitious » capital gains at some 155 million euros between 2018 and 2021, only the media. The club, listed on the stock exchange, would also have hidden from its investors the existence of private agreements with players, not attacking the Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo, to settle certain deferred salaries.
READ ALSO : Nantes beaten by Juventus in the Europa League
Added to these legal setbacks are financial problems. The « Old Lady » was eliminated from the group stages of the Champions League, a premature exit which will lead to a shortfall of some 20 million euros, according to the site Calcio and Finanza. The club, in the red for the past five years, had recorded losses of 255 million euros last season: a record deficit in Italian (Site notre bureau spécialisé).