The Rome Public Prosecutor's Office has requested that Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis be sent to trial. The crime being contested is false accounting in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 financial years .
The public prosecutors of Piazzale Clodio, Lorenzo Del Giudice and Giorgio Orano, have also requested the trial for the Neapolitan club and for De Laurentiis' right-hand man, Andrea Chievelli.
At the centre of the investigation are the alleged fictitious capital gains in the transfer of Kostas Manolas from Roma (summer 2019) and Victor Osimhen from Lille (in 2020) .
Osimhen, top scorer in the year of the third championship, was the most expensive purchase in the club's history: he arrived in Naples for 71 million and 250 thousand euros. Lille were paid 50 million, the players' registrations turned over to Lille were valued at over 21 million: they are the Greek goalkeeper Orestis Karnezis and three youngsters who literally disappeared from circulation, Luigi Liguori, Claudio Manzi and Ciro Palmieri . And it is precisely on the valuation of these three players that much of the investigation has focused.
In the context of sports justice for these facts, Napoli and De Laurentiis were acquitted in 2022. But the case could be reopened, the federal prosecutor Giuseppe Chiné should in fact request the documents from the Rome Prosecutor's Office .
De Laurentiis' lawyers Fabio Fulgeri and Lorenzo Contrada declare that their client is "absolutely extraneous" to the accusations made by the Prosecutor's Office. "The decision to proceed also against SSC Napoli appears incomprehensible considering that the documents contain opinions drafted by technical consultants and third-party bodies (Assomine) that incontrovertibly demonstrate that Napoli acted legitimately and in compliance with Italian accounting principles. We are extremely convinced that the proceedings will conclude positively".
(Unioneonline/L)
