In the case surrounding the death of Fiorentina player and former Rossoblu player Davide Astori, the former director of Sports Medicine at Careggi, Giorgio Galanti, "despite already being under the scrutiny of the judicial authorities, did not hesitate to fabricate a false document to adduce evidence in his favor, implicating the two senior employees of the Sports Medicine department of the Careggi Hospital in criminal conduct." This is stated in the ruling of the Florence court on June 13, 2025, which sentenced Professor Galanti to one year for ideological forgery and, for the same offense, two doctors in the department, Dr. Loira Toncelli and Professor Pietro Amedeo Modesti, to eight months . Modesti was also charged with the crime of "destruction of a true document."
Galanti's fraud is deemed proven beyond reasonable doubt "for having collaborated with Dr. Toncelli in 2019 to produce a document with a positive assessment of Astori's strain data, falsely backdated to 2017, in order to provide additional evidence in his favor in the trial for the athlete's death." According to the Florence court, Galanti asked Dr. Toncelli to "materially draft the document relating to Astori's strain." The now former director of Sports Medicine, it is further stated, "had an agreement with her regarding the inclusion of the disputed date." According to the Florence judges, the document drafted by Toncelli "is undoubtedly a public document but lacks any legally binding character, lacking any regulatory provision, of any legal rank, even within the internal regulations of the Hospital Administration, that recognizes privileged credibility in an assessment of a specific patient's health parameters."
Galanti and Dr. Toncelli are alleged to have falsified the date of a medical certificate , making it appear to be dated July 10, 2017, the day Astori underwent a medical examination prior to his competitive activity. Astori died on March 4, 2018, in Udine, in his hotel room, which he occupied while away on a pre-match retreat with Fiorentina. The defense is appealing the ruling to the Court of Appeal. " The ruling has been appealed, so the decision is not final," explains Professor Galanti's defense attorney, Sigfrido Fenyes. " We are at a stage in which the constitutional principle of the presumption of innocence must be respected . The case concerns the placing of a date not on a bona fide certificate, as recognized by the court itself, but on a simple attestation of the reading of a test actually taken previously. This test is unchangeable and legible at any time and not susceptible to alteration or different interpretation." All the evidence shows that there was no agreement to draw up a false statement between Professor Galanti and the person who actually wrote that date."
The conviction for false ideology stems from a second investigation into Galanti's defense, who was already implicated in the first manslaughter case. Galanti has already been definitively sentenced to one year for manslaughter in the death of the Viola captain. According to the Supreme Court of Cassation, Professor Galanti issued "the athlete a certificate of fitness for sport without having performed all the necessary medical tests (specifically, a 24-hour Holter monitor) that were required, according to the guidelines, given a series of critical elements that emerged from the player's tests, which were either overlooked or underestimated by the doctor."
(Unioneonline)
