The Rome prosecutor's office has closed the investigation which sees the president of Napoli, Aurelio De Laurentiis, under investigation . The accusation is of false accounting in relation to the purchase of Victor Osimhen from French club Lille in 2020 for a sum exceeding 70 million euros plus 10 million in bonuses . The closing of the investigations was also notified to other suspects: these are the members of the Board of Directors who were in office at the time of the events.
According to the Capitoline prosecutors, to whom the file came to the attention due to their expertise, after the transmission of the documents from Naples, the transfer operation would have been carried out by resorting to fictitious capital gains on three players from the Napoli academy and a fourth member, sold in counterpart with off-market prices : 7 million for Palmieri, 4.8 million for the goalkeeper Karnezis, 4 million for Manzi and 4 million for Liguori .
None of these players were then employed by Lille and the three boys from the academy remained to play on loan in Italy, where they now play in the minor categories.
The start of the proceedings in Naples dates back to June 2022 when the Guardia di Finanza soldiers searched the Filmauro headquarters in Rome and that of the club in Castel Volturno, in the province of Caserta.
«The investigation which had been closed with reference to hypotheses of tax crimes has been closed. Now we will read the investigation papers, I remember that today is not an indictment but a closure of investigations ." Thus Fabio Fulgeri, the lawyer who deals with the defense of Aurelio De Laurentiis. «Tendively - explains the lawyer - false accounting in its original crime hypothesis arises from the idea of defrauding the tax authorities, but in this case this did not happen, it is a hypothesis already excluded by the magistrates in Naples . However, the investigation remains ongoing. I remember that today is not an indictment, but a notice that the investigations have been concluded and we can now view the documents and then begin to explain our formal defense before the prosecutor . I believe that next week, from Thursday onwards, we will be able to read the documents and we will try to explain our reasons".
The lawyer confirms that De Laurentiis will go to the prosecutor's office "to explain the operation and defend himself" , underlining that he is ready to see "what they accuse us of - he adds - because there is no need to identify the fraud of profit, we wonder what it would be Napoli's advantage given that the Federal Prosecutor's Office has already excluded these advantages, we'll see."
(Unioneonline/vl)
