Charges Finally Coming From that Transfer Fraud Investigation

By: Martha | September 24th, 2007

Stinky Milanese. Back in June, there was a frenzy about investigations into sketchy transfers among Serie A clubs, leading to speculation that it was Calciopoli 2.0, and perhaps cost Inter the title 2005-2006 title they got from Juve, or even get them sent down. While none of that is remotely likely to happen, phase one of the investigations are now completed, and indictments for fraud have been requested against several big cheeses from Inter and Milan — including Adriano Galliani, but not calcio’s own Teflon man, Massimo Moratti. Nothing, somehow, ever touches him.

As you may recalled from the earlier discussion of this matter, if this issue* ends up coming before a judge, the odds of conviction are incredibly slim for several reasons, primary among them the impossibility of putting a definitive value on a player. I mean, just because Milan paid Inter €2.4 million for a hunk of cheese, that doesn’t mean they were intentionally defrauding the league and cooking their books — maybe Milan really thought that hunk of cheese could play! Additionally, there have been changes to fraud law recently in Italy, and the statute of limitation on some of the specific transfers in question is rapidly approaching.

If charges against Milan and Inter personnel don’t warm the cockles of your heart, be patient because there’s another transfer fraud investigation currently underway, involving folks like Sergio Cragnotti and The Great and Pure Rosella Sensi, as well as Juve, Genoa and Sampdoria, among other clubs. In other words, get use to the laughing when clubs talk about their high moral standards — almost all of them are lying, though the courts probably still won’t end up convicting any of them.

*There’s some background the tradition of friendly transfer arrangements in this post from June.