Barcelona and Man City are among the clubs who have been implicated in an investigation in suspicious transfers in Serie A, with 42 deals involving Juventus.
The Italian football watchdog (COVISOC) has passed on a report to the Italian FA (FIGC) which is primarily focused on studying multiple exchange deals between clubs and capital gains due to valuations that may have been inflated.
The report has outlined 62 transfers that were completed between 2019 and 2021, with particular attention being focused on exchange deals between clubs that were recorded as profits for clubs.
COVISOC have flagged the deals that they believe arouse a level of suspicion and it has now been passed on to the FIGC’s prosecutor, Giuseppe Chine.
The recording of capital gains from player swaps is a legitimate accounting practice and it now must be decided by Chine as to whether the FIGC probe further and act on the watchdog’s report.
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It is not the first time that player swap deals have prompted suspicion within officials of Italian football.
In 2019, Italian FA president Gabriele Gravina confirmed that buy-back clauses would be removed from transfers in Italian football due to suspicion that they were being exploited for accounting purposes.
Gravina told La Repubblica: “We monitor player exchanges which may be suspicious and for this reason we have abolished the buy-back clause.”
Last year, a similar scandal hit Serie B in Italy, and ultimately resulted in docked points for Cesena and Chievo Verona – two clubs that later were declared bankrupt.
Italian media outlet Il Tempo has outlined the 62 deals and the valuations recorded, with the biggest case being Juve’s swap deal with Man City in August 2019 which saw Joao Cancelo move to the English club with Danilo going the other way.
Danilo’s valuation was listed as €37million when joining the club with Cancelo’s valuation standing at €65million.
Another swap deal between Juve and City is under investigation – the one that saw Spain youth international striker Pablo Moreno going to City with Portuguese player Felix Correia going the other way, with the deals valued at €10million and €10.5million respectively.
The other big-money operation listed was the deal that took Bosnian midfielder Miralem Pjanic – currently on loan at Besiktas – from Juve to Barcelona in 2020, with Arthur Melo moving in the opposite direction.
Pjanic was valued at €60.8million when he joined the Blaugrana while Arthur’s valuation stood at €72million.
That same transfer window saw the two clubs conclude another swap deal, as Pereira Da Silva joined Barcelona as Alejandro Marques moved to the Old Lady as part of the move.
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Napoli, Parma and Sampdoria are the other three Italian clubs who have a string of transfers listed, with the highest profile taking Victor Osimhen to Napoli from Lille.
The Nigerian striker moved to Naples in a deal valued at €71.25million, as per the Il Tempo report, as Orestis Karnezis, Claudio Manzi, Ciro Palmieri and Luigi Liguori all went in the opposite direction for a total of €20.13million.
Palmieri and Liguori have then returned to Italy and are now playing for Nocerina and Afragolese in Serie D - Italy’s fourth division.
