FIGC prosecutor to resume Milan investigation soon – points deduction a risk

Having closed the investigation into the Acerbi-Juan Jesus case, Giuseppe Chinè has resumed working on the various issues that have been on the table of the federal prosecutor’s office for days, starting with the file opened on AC Milan.

If you need to catch up on what happened last month when Casa Milan was raided by the authorities, there are seven key questions related to the case which were answered.

As La Gazzetta dello Sport recall, it is an investigation born after the Milan Prosecutor’s Office – on 13 March – entered Giorgio Furlani and Ivan Gazidis, current and previous CEO of the Rossoneri, in the register of suspects, on charges of obstructing the exercise of the functions of the public authorities of supervision at the time of the transition from Elliott Management to RedBird Capital in August 2022.

The reference is to the FIGC (Italian Football Federation), a private body but which prosecutors Polizzi and Cavalleri consider to be public law in the exercise of their supervisory activity.

Chinè – who acquired the first part of documentation from Milan a couple of weeks ago – is constantly in contact with the Lombard prosecutors and intends to ask for new documents to better define the situation.

In fact, so far he has only received the 12 pages of the search decree, now he hopes to have something more detailed, perhaps including the analysis of the contents of the devices seized from Gazidis and Furlani.

But that’s not all: very soon the federal prosecutor will proceed with interrogations which should inevitably include the two suspects.

The matter is quite serious because from a sporting point of view, Milan risks a points deduction in the standings. The object of the investigation by the FIGC Prosecutor’s Office is in fact the alleged false declarations by the Rossoneri to the CoAPS – Commission for the Acquisition of Company Shares – a body with no public value (unlike Covisoc) responsible for verifying the requirements of new buyers.

They want to ascertain that at the time of the transfer of ownership, no information necessary for the Commission to ascertain in particular the requirements of good repute and financial solidity of the future owners was withheld.

The issue is defined by article 20 bis of the Noif which regulates ‘Acquisitions and sales of company shareholdings in the professional field’, whose sanctions expressly refer to article 32 of the Code of Sports Justice which, as mentioned, also provides for penalisation of points.

Once all the documents have been studied with the utmost attention, Chinè could also challenge the two against article 4, which obliges clubs and managers to observe ‘the principles of loyalty, correctness and probity’, while Milan, based on the Article 6, can be accused of direct responsibility, given that we are talking about two CEOs.