Inter, capital gains survey: operations for 90 million in the crosshairs

Also in Milan it is time to investigate capital gains, those of Inter this time. The prosecutor has in fact opened an investigation that hypothesizes the crime of “false corporate communications” in a file against unknown persons, that is, without suspects. At the same time, the accounts of the Milan cousins ​​had already been X-rayed, on which no suspicion of irregularity emerged based on the first investigations. So the lens was aimed above all on the ninety million capital gains made by the Nerazzurri in the budgets of two sporting seasons, the 2017-18 and the 18-19. Yesterday, as delegated by the prosecutors Giovanna Cavalleri and Giovanni Polizzi and the deputy prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli, the financiers spent four hours in Viale della Liberazione, home of the Italian champion club, and also went to the football league, where the clubs deposit their contracts. They acquired the documents on all the transfers of the period in question: balance sheets, contracts, bank transactions on the exchanges of which we want to “verify the regularity of the accounting of the related capital gains”, as the acting attorney Riccardo Targetti explained in a note. If the investigation launched by the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office on Juve capital gains had been triggered by a first communication from Consob, this time it was an information from the Fiamme Gialle that moved the magistrates in an investigation independent from the Turin one. It was broadcast on 9 December on the basis of press reports, abundant in recent weeks: the financiers thus observed both the Milanese and then highlighted some possible critical issues, still to be verified, in Inter’s balance sheets. In detail, they want to understand whether “the value of players’ registration rights” has been deliberately overestimated to increase revenues and, consequently, decrease losses.

The investigation

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In the viewfinder there are the exchanges of a dozen players, not all of the first tier, through which an alleged “window dressing” operation would have been carried out. That is, a make-up of the financial statements to give a better representation of the conditions of the company in order to respect the parameters of financial fair play required by UEFA for registration in the championships. Thus, among others less known, the documents on the Romanian goalkeeper Ionut Radu, on the Belgian defender Zinho Vanheusden and on the blue striker Andrea Pinamonti were collected, all “rebounded” at different times between Inter and Genoa. Precisely the tip, before being brought back to Milan, had guaranteed the largest capital gain of all those under observation in 2019: 19 million. The other hot axis, on the other hand, is that in 2018 between Milan and Bergamo: some boys from the Inter nursery (Bettella and Carraro valued at 12 million total) headed towards the Goddess, while the very talented Bastoni (31.1) went to Milan. At the moment, every hypothesis is still in its infancy and the Nerazzurri club with an immediate statement said he was calm: “The company’s financial statements are drawn up in compliance with the most rigorous accounting principles. No cardholder is under investigation and no objection has been formalized as these are preliminary investigations “. In short, serenity filters also because it is noted that the evaluations of the players are by definition always “random”. In fact, even on the fourth floor of the Palazzo di Giustizia one goes with lead feet: similar cases have already ended with nothing in the past (in 2008, Inter was already acquitted for similar cases) and there is no criterion “Scientific” to determine what is the right price for a player. You know, the value is not affected only by objective elements such as performance, but also by imponderable circumstances such as injuries or, simply, the lack of feeling with a technician. For example, Pinamonti himself, off the radar with Conte, is now moving towards the old evaluation in the province: in Empoli so far he has scored the same goals as the other rising forward, Gianluca Scamacca, six, but with one less presence. A case of another nature is, however, the sale of Nicolò Zaniolo to Rome: sold to the Giallorossi for 4 million in the Nainggolan deal, after a few months it was worth ten times as much.

The strategy

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To be precise, the two seasons brought Inter total capital gains of 89.8 million: 49.7 in 2017-18 and 40.1 in 2018-19. Overall, they amount to approximately 11% of the company’s turnover (respectively 346.9 in the first season and 417 in the second). After all, “capital gain” has been the key word at the Nerazzurri for a long time, almost a necessity to build the future: they were used to close the balance sheets without going overboard, especially during the strict settlement agreement regime which was only passed in June 2019. In fact , the Nerazzurri management had been called to complex somersaults and, even through those old operations, had managed to secure qualification for the Champions League from 2018, necessary to slowly build this last winning team. Those movements, however, will now have to pass the evaluation of the prosecutor Polizzi and the adjunct Romanelli, the same ones who in Milan have just opened a file on an alleged tax fraud of the Macedonian super-prosecutor Fali Ramadani: they will have to ascertain whether crimes have been committed and possibly by whom.