Juventus Has Been Deducted 15 Points By The Italian Football Federation

Juventus
Juventus

Just days after this week’s appointment of Juventus’ new board, the Bianconeri were back in the limelight after the Italian FA docked them 15 points and banned several former club officials. In fact, as a previous column explained, the confirmation of the new Chairman Gianluca Ferrero and Chief Executive Officer Maurizio Scanavino only came on Wednesday, and this most recent decision came barely 48 hours later.

It was a result of Juventus’ objection to the inquiry into inflated player transfer costs that were previously covered in this column. Authorities in Italy investigated many player transfers between 2019 and 2021 as a result, thinking the club had submitted inflated plusvalenza data.

Juventus Might Need To Start From The Bottom Again

All of the teams were initially found not guilty, but it was later made public that the Italian government had started looking into allegations that players for Juventus’ first team were paid off the books at the height of the Covid-19 outbreak. A number of players purportedly signed agreements to have their pay reduced to aid the team through that incredibly tough time, but CONSOB, the organization in charge of overseeing the Italian securities market, revealed that the money was actually paid to the club “in the black.”

That would entail that both the players and the club avoided paying taxes on those sums, and the club would also have fabricated its financial records, as was explained in this follow-up essay. Given that Juventus is a publicly traded company with legal obligations to the stock market, this would be categorized as financial fraud. 

Wiretaps purportedly recorded a number of directors discussing the same transactions as the original plusvalenza case, which was later reopened against solely Juve, during that inquiry. All of this culminated in the announcement on Friday that the team would get a 15-point deduction and that the main players involved would receive bans. Former president Andrea Agnelli, former CEO Maurizio Arrivabene, and sporting director Federico Cherubini all received two-year suspensions.