In May 2006, Moggi was involved in the sports scandal that became known as Calciopoli, which remains a much debated and controversial topic due to the one-sided focus on Juventus and Moggi, an issue that was cited in the Naples sentence about the criminal trial. The related Calciopoli trials in Naples, which revealed the implications of many other clubs who could not be put on trial due to the statute of limitations and were not weighted in the Moggi sentences, absolved him of some related offences and reached the appeal sentence in December 2013 with a sentence of 2 years and 4 months in prison. His remaining charges related to Calciopoli were cancelled without a new trial due to the statute of limitations by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation in March 2015. In March 2020, Moggi appealed to the European Court of Human Rights for the conduct of the trials.
Biography
Moggi was born into a modest family in Monticiano,[1] in the province of Siena on 10 July 1937. He had a passion for football from an early age, playing for forty days in Akragas in the 1963–64 Serie C season. He left school at the age of 13.[1] After middle school, he worked at the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, settling in Civitavecchia and playing as a stopper in teams of lower categories. In the late 1960s, dissatisfied with his work and tired of playing football without income, Moggi envisioned a future as a talent scout, particularly in minor football.[2] His son, Alessandro Moggi, works as an agent for several football players and managers. He is head of GEA World, a consortium of football agents and managers, which were ranked the first by volume from 2002 to 2006.[3]
Career
Moggi worked as a railway station caretaker until the early 1970s, when he met Italo Allodi, then Juventus' managing director, who appointed him to minor roles at the club. Before being called as chief managing director by Juventus in 1994, he worked for and collaborated with several teams, such as Roma, Lazio, Torino, and Napoli, where he won several league, domestic, and confederal titles.[2]
Early years at Juventus and Roma
Moggi at Roma in 1978 with Luciano Spinosi (left) and Roberto Pruzzo (right)
After entering senior football in the 1970s for Juventus under general manager Allodi, Moggi organized a network of scouts looking for young talent in suburban fields. Among his footballers are the sixteen year old Paolo Rossi in 1972, Claudio Gentile in 1973, and Gaetano Scirea in 1974.[2] A few years later, Moggi took on a more important role, and he also established contacts with the other teams to start negotiations until he was forced to change companies due to the break with then-Juventus president Giampiero Boniperti.[2]
Moggi's next job was at Roma of the new president Gaetano Anzalone. Thanks to the help of some journalists, it was Moggi who came forward and got to know Anzalone, who decided on his job as transfer market consultant in 1977. During his period at Roma, which won the 1979–80 Coppa Italia, Moggi acquired Roberto Pruzzo, who was blown right to Boniperti's Juventus.[2] His departure from Roma occurred a few days after Dino Viola, the new president, learned that, on the eve of the match against Ascoli, Moggi had been having dinner with Claudio Pieri, the match referee. It was 25 November 1979 and the tenth matchday of the 1979–80 Serie A that was being played; Roma won the match 1–0 and the president of Ascoli, Costantino Rozzi, was upset about a refeering that, in his view, was in favour of Roma. In the locker room, Rozzi met Viola, to whom he said his criticism of Moggi, seen in a restaurant in the company of the referee and the two linesmen. Moggi described it as a casual event.[2] Viola used the episode as a pretest to release Moggi, telling him he wanted a sporting director who lived in Rome, even though Moggi lived in the Rome metropolitan area of Civitavecchia.[4]
Lazio, Torino, Napoli, Roma, and Juventus
Moggi with then Napoli president Corrado Ferlaino
After the 1980 Italian football betting scandal, which came to be known as Totonero and in which he was not involved, Moggi was hired as general manager by Lazio to relaunch it. After two years, he resigned with the club still in Serie B.[2] In 1982, he moved at Torino of president Sergio Rossi and managing director Luciano Nizzola. He suffered the protests of the fans due to the underwhelming market hits completed, such as the Argentine Patricio Hernández, or missed ones, such as the Yugoslav Safet Sušić. He remained at Torino for five years with mixed results.[2] On 29 May 1987, he resigned from his position.[5]
Moggi relaxing with Napoli star Diego Armando Maradona
On 22 June 1987, Moggi moved at Napoli of Corrado Ferlaino and Diego Armando Maradona immediately after the victory of their first scudetto, succeeding Allodi. Napoli won the 1989 UEFA Cup final, the 1989–90 Serie A, and the 1990 Supercoppa Italiana. In March 1991, Moggi resigned due to incompatibility with Ferlaino.[6] He then returned at Torino under president Gian Mauro Borsano, and the club reached the 1992 UEFA Cup final, which was lost due to the away goals rule, and won the 1993 Coppa Italia final due to the same rule. In 1994, he was investigated together with his collaborator Luigi Pavarese for sporting offenses and aiding and abetting prostitution for referees during the 1991–92 UEFA Cup matches. Borsano and the accountant Giovanni Matta testified that it was Moggi who personally took care of the hospitality of the referees and linesmen, and of providing them with prostitutes for the home games, while the services were paid for by Torino through black funds. The sentence was one of acquittal because Pavarese assumed all the responsibilities, while on the sporting side the fraud could not exist as sporting fraud did not apply to UEFA matches, and UEFA quickly closed its investigation.[7][8]
Moggi remained at Juventus until May 2006 when he resigned, saying: "They killed my soul."[10][11][12] He was linked to a judicial investigation in the sports field known as Calciopoli. Some telephone tapping of an investigation filed by the court of Turin were published in some newspapers, the folders of which had been sent to Franco Carraro, then president of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and himself involved in the scandal but came out unscattered not without controversy,[13][14][15] in which some managers inquired with the referee designator Pierluigi Pairetto, then-referee delegate for UEFA, on the names of some referees who had to be drawn to referee the matches of the next Champions League. A scandal then broke out, which led to the resignation of Moggi and the other two managers, for an investigation that theorized the crime of criminal association aimed at sports fraud. According to the allegations, Moggi had singular relationships with some people who gravitated around Italian sports journalism, with the aim of putting the work of referees and clubs in a good or bad light. Turin's public prosecution office had earlier rejected the charges by the prosecution.[16][nb 1]
Calciopoli
In May 2006, Moggi was linked as the central figure in Calciopoli,[17][18][19] a vast referee lobbying scandal spanning the professional top two Italian football leagues. Daily newspaper la Repubblica published the contents of several wiretappings in which Moggi, along with the country's former referee nominator Pierluigi Pairetto, was said to assign referees to specific matches, including many in which Juventus was not a participant. Moggi received a five-year ban from football and a recommendation to the FIGC president that he be banned for life from membership of the FIGC at any level. This was controversial because he and Giraudo (both from Juventus) were the sole executives to be banned for life, which came a few months before their five-year ban expired. As summarized by Carlo Garganese for Goal.com, "[the FIGC sentence] stated perfectly clearly [sic] that no Article 6 violations (match-fixing/attempted match-fixing breaks the sixth article of the sporting code) were found within the intercepted calls and the season was fair and legitimate, but that the ex-Juventus directors nonetheless demonstrated they could potentially benefit from their exclusive relationship with referee designators Gianluigi Pairetto and Paolo Bergamo. There were, however, no requests for specific referees, no demands for favours and no conversations between Juventus directors and referees themselves."[20] Juventus had been absolved in the ordinary justice proceedings,[21] and the courts ruled that Moggi acted in his self-interest to help Lazio and Fiorentina, which is why Juventus was absolved of wrongdoings and was not liable by other clubs;[22][23][24] Moggi said that he did not care about Fiorentina and Lazio but that Carraro did, citing his own wiretaps in which Carraro asked to help them.[25]
As early as 2010, when many other clubs were implicated and Inter Milan, Livorno, and Milan liable of direct Article 6 violations in the 2011 Palazzi Report, Juventus considered challenging the stripping of their scudetto from 2006 and the non-assignment of the 2005 title, dependent on the results of Calciopoli trials connected to the 2006 scandal.[26] On 8 November 2011, Naples court issued the first conclusion of the criminal case against Moggi and the other football personalities involved,[27] sentencing him to jail for five years and four months for criminal association.[28] In December 2013, Moggi's sentence was reduced to two years and four months for being found guilty of conspiring to commit a crime; the earlier charge of sporting fraud was dismissed, owing to the statute of limitations.[29] On 23 March 2015, in its final resolution, Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation ruled that Moggi was acquitted of "some individual charges for sporting fraud, but not from being the 'promoter' of the 'criminal conspiracy' that culminated in Calciopoli."[30][31] Nevertheless, the remaining charges of Moggi were cancelled without a new trial due to the statute of limitations.[32]
When Moggi's conviction in criminal court in connection with the scandal was partially written off by the Supreme Court, Juventus sued the FIGC for €443 million for damages caused by their 2006 relegation. Then-FIGC president Carlo Tavecchio offered to discuss reinstatement of the lost scudetti in exchange for Juventus dropping the lawsuit.[33] On 9 September 2015, the Supreme Court released a 150-page document that explained its final ruling of the case, based on the controversial 2006 sporting sentence, which did not take in consideration the other clubs involved because they could not be put on trial due to the statute of limitations, and it would be necessary to request and open a revocation of judgment pursuant to Article 39 of the Code of Sports Justice. Despite his remaining charges being cancelled without a new trial due to the statute of limitations, the court confirmed that Moggi was actively involved in the sporting fraud, which was intended to favour Juventus and increase his own personal benefits according to La Gazzetta dello Sport.[34][35] As did the Naples court in 2012,[36][37] the court commented that the developments and behavior of other clubs and executives were not investigated in depth.[38] In 2016, the TAR tribunal rejected the request of compensation promoted by Juventus.[39] On 15 March 2017, Moggi's lifetime ban was definitively confirmed on final appeal.[40]
Moggi continues to make observations on the Serie A on Italy's newspapers, as well as sports and local television channels, such as Sportitalia and Telecapri Sport. Since 2011, he collaborates with Radio Manà Manà. In March 2020, having exhausted appeals in Italy's courts, Moggi appealed to the European Court of Human Rights for the conduct of the trials, including the lack of time given to the defence in the 2006 sporting trial,[nb 2] among other issues; Giraudo's was accepted in September 2021.[42][43]
Proceedings
Calciopoli trials were much debated and controversial since their beginning in 2006.[41][44] While supporters of the prosecution cite the sentences as evidence, there remains controversy and unclear aspects.[45][46] Several observers and commentators feel that Moggi was made a scapegoat,[47][nb 3] cited inconsistencies in the sentences,[nb 4] such as Juventus being absolved and the league not being fixed but the club was relegated to Serie B,[51][52][53] including the lack of investigation into other clubs and executives, and argue that only Moggi and Juventus paid,[16] and that it was disproportionate,[nb 5] since unlike other clubs and executives, who could not be put on trial due to the statute of limitations, they were never charged of Article 6 violations (Inter Milan, Livorno, and A.C. Milan were the clubs charged of Article 6 violations by the prosecutor Stefano Palazzi in 2011), the one about illicits that is ground for relegation.[54][55][nb 6] No judge returned evidence to affirm that the 2004–05 Serie A was fixed as charged by the prosecution;[53] the chief prosecutor had to change the charge to that of anticipated crime for something that was not committed, and Moggi's charge, as written in the Naples sentence, which did not take in consideration the thousands of thousands wiretaps that were publicly released by Moggi's legal team in 2010 and were available to the investigators back in 2006 but were not used,[20] was not that he fixed matches or leagues but that his behavior was close enough to "the limit of the existence of the crime of attempt",[36][56] hence the conviction.[37][57][58]
Some observers alleged that Calciopoli and its aftermath were also a dispute within Juventus and between the club's owners, who wanted to get rid of Moggi, Giraudo, and Roberto Bettega, whose shares in the club increased.[59] Whatever their intentions, it is argued they condemned Juventus, firstly when lawyer Carlo Zaccone asked for relegation and point-deduction, refn|In later years, Zaccone clarified he made that statement because Juventus were the only club risking more than one-division relegation (Serie C),[60] and he meant for Juventus (the sole club to be ultimately demoted) to have equal treatment with the other clubs;[61][62] and secondly when Luca Cordero di Montezemolo retired the club's appeal to the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) of Lazio,[nb 7] for which then FIFA president Sepp Blatter and then CONI president Gianni Petrucci thanked John Elkann and Montezemolo,[63] and that could have reduced Moggi's charges and cleared the club's name and avoid relegation,[64][65] after FIFA threatened to suspend the FIGC and barring all Italian clubs from international play.[66][67][68] This amounted, as recounted by Corriere della Sera journalist Mario Sconcerti, to "a sort of public plea bargain" and guilty admission.[69][70][nb 8]Calciopoli judge Piero Sandulli stated that the GEA World ruling dismantled the prosecution, and commented: "We punished the violation of internal rules in 2006. Basically, our sentence highlighted above all bad habits, not classic illicit acts. It had to be made clear that what was in the wiretapping is not to be done. It was an ethical condemnation. The criminal trial evaluates other things."[72]
Sports justice
In the sports sentence, the Federal Appeal Commission (CAF), a FIGC judicial court,[nb 9] stated that Juventus was not responsible for Fiorentina avoiding relegation, and that Moggi and Giraudo operated independently of Juventus and its owners. In addition, the court ruled that there was no evidence of match fixing or a Moggi system, as was reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport. Finally, referee selections were done in accordance with the rules of the FIGC, phone calls made by Moggi to referee designator Paolo Bergamo did not constitute in itself a sporting illicit, and there was no organization of targeted yellow cards. Nonetheless, the sentence stated that "though Moggi didn't exercise his ability to condition matches, he still possessed the ability", and even though there were no Article 6 violations against Juventus, it introduced the much-disputed illecito associativo ("associative illicit") violation,[74][nb 10] which resulted in the club's relegation;[55] the given motivation was that "Juventus' advantage was evidenced by their position in the standings at the end of the season."[73]
In July 2006, the FIGC's Court of Justice confirmed a five-year ban for Moggi, with a proposal to ban him for life. In response to the sentence, he said: "I am not bitter for myself, but for the teams implicated and for their supporters. No match was fixed, no referees were favored. It is why Juventus and the other clubs, but especially the fans, are frustrated by this sentence."[75] In 2010, the FIGC banned Moggi for life.[76][77] In response, he said: "I don't know anything, I don't know what it means, they should be ashamed after what came out. I speak for myself, Giraudo, for those who suffer from this situation, they should expel Carraro." Moggi then went on to say: "I have never said that everyone is guilty and therefore there is no one to blame. There is a practice, you have to ban Carraro when he says in wiretaps that you have to save Fiorentina and Lazio."[78] He commented: "I hope that in a short time the state authorities will decide to intervene, perhaps with an institutional control body, on the federal atrocities that have been committed and are continuing to be committed against me." He wondered "why the sports judges, having to have condemned me on the basis of a handful of interceptions, despite knowing that there were many others, did not continue to investigate as was their duty, and only in these days have realized their faults and their omissions, which surprisingly claim to conclude with the statute of limitations for Moratti and company, and a ban for the undersigned, as they would never have dared to doeven in the Banana Republic."[79] On 9 July 2011, the Federal Court confirmed his ban.[80][81] In 2012, CONI confirmed Moggi's lifetime ban.[82] The TAR of Lazio rejected the request for suspension of the provision of the High Court of Sports Justice.[83] In 2016, the TAR rejected the appeal, definitively confirming the foreclosure from any position in the context of Italian sport.[84] On 15 March 2017, Italy's Council of State judged inadmissible the appeal filed by Moggi against the lifetime ban due to lack of jurisdiction of the state judge.[85]
Criminal justice
GEA World
Moggi was charged of criminal association aimed at unlawful competition through threats and private violence as part of the investigation into the GEA World company. According to the prosecution, he and his son, Alessandro Moggi, as well as Franco Zavaglia, were the promoters of the system of power that would have led GEA to exercise a dominant function in the world of football.[86] The indictment stated that the three would have created GEA to "acquire the largest number of sports attorneys, through them, obtain a contractual power capable of decisively affecting the football market, to influence the management of players and consequently that of various teams in the football league".[87] In 2009, the X section of the Rome Court sentenced Moggi to 1 year and 6 months' imprisonment for private violence against the football players Manuele Blasi, who was induced to leave his sports manager, Stefano Antonelli, to go to GEA, and Nicola Amoruso, on similar grounds.[88]
In the appeal process, both he and his son were acquitted, together with all the other members of GEA, of the charge of criminal conspiracy aimed at unlawful competition, as the request for a sentence of 4 years and 8 months by the attorney general Alberto Mussel was rejected.[89] The sentence of the appeal trial of 25 March 2011 reduced the sentence to one year's imprisonment due to the statute of limitations of the facts relating to Amoruso; it also sentenced Moggi to pay damages against the prosecutor Stefano Antonelli and the FIGC, and confirmed the acquittal for the charge of criminal association. The one-year sentence would not have been served as it was covered by the 2006 pardon.[90] On 15 January 2014, the trial ended with the annulment "for incorrect application of the law" without a new trial due to the statute of limitations for the one-year sentence for private violence established in the second instance and the confirmation of the acquittal verdict issued in the two previous instances with regard to the accusation of criminal conspiracy aimed at unlawful competition.[91]
Naples Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Cassation
In October 2008, chief prosecutor Giuseppe Narducci was quoted in court as saying: "Like it or not, no other calls exist between the designators and other directors."[20] During the criminal trials in Naples, the legal team of Moggi released a number of wiretaps showing that Inter Milan, Milan, and many other Italian clubs and executives not previously investigated in 2006 were involved in referee lobbying. Moggi's lawyer Maurilio Prioreschi asked the court to take in consideration that between 2006 (the year of the first sentences) and 2011 (the year of the sentence on Moggi's lifetime ban) numerous hearings were held during the criminal trial in Naples, from which wiretaps involving other club executives that, according to Moggi's legal defence, would drop the basic assumption of the 2006 sporting conviction, namely that relating to the conditioning of the referees thanks to the preferential treatment by the referee designators towards Moggi and Juventus, which in turn led to the sporting offence. Many of those wiretaps formed the body of Palazzi's report, with which the FIGC's chief prosecutor intended to refer many executives and clubs for violations of the Code of Sports Justice, a circumstance that was prevented only by the statute of limitations. The court's Disciplinary Commission purposely ignored this defensive argument, and arguing that it was a reassessment of the facts not permitted at that time, no importance was given to the conduct of those other clubs and executives that had just emerged during the criminal trial.[92] According to the FIGC's Court of Justice, as explained in its judgment of appeal in regards to the term attualizzare ("actualize"), the court was there not to expand the evidence on which the first judgment was based but rather to ascertain whether at that time those established facts were still serious enough to justify a lifetime ban; it concluded that this ruling must be expressed exclusively "on the basis of the sentences rendered" against Moggi, and cannot take into consideration any comparative judgment with conducts possibly attributable to other subjects of the FIGC law. The court stated that to have a reassessment of the facts of Calciopoli, it would be necessary to request and open a revocation of judgment pursuant to Article 39 of the Code of Sports Justice.[92]
On 8 November 2011, Moggi was sentenced in the first instance by the Naples Court to 5 years and 4 months in prison (in addition to the five-year ban and lifetime ban) for promoting the criminal conspiracy[93] On 17 December 2013, in the appeal process, the sentence was reduced to 2 years and 4 months.[94] On 24 March 2015, the Supreme Court of Cassation annulled the verdict of conviction in the second instance without a new trial, as the crime of criminal conspiracy was extinguished by the statute of limitations, and of two charges of sports fraud due to the non-existence of the crime, as well as the rejection of the appeal for some charges of sports fraud, which were extinguished by the statute of limitations in 2012.[32]
Moggi's reactions
Moggi always declared himself innocent, and in his appeals to the European Court of Human Rights stated that "if they give me a pardon, I renounce it. Pardon is for those who are guilty, I'm not guilty [of the 'criminal association' charge], I didn't do anything [criminal]. They weren't angry at me, they were angry at Juventus because it won too much."[95] About his actions, Moggi stated that they were criticizable, and he was wrong from an ethical standpoint but did not commit any illicit; he said that "[t]he sports court, at the end of the trial, ruled as follows: 'Regular championship, no match altered.' Therefore Juventus [is] exempt from crimes referred to in Art. 6. The final ruling of the ordinary justice instead spoke of 'early consummation' crimes, which are nothing more than the fruit of hypotheses and inferences of that prosecutor who in the courtroom had asserted 'there were no other phone calls, if not those of the suspects in the trial', while the [Italian Football] Federation Prosecutor asserted that 'Inter Milan was the club that risked most of all for the illegal behavior of its President Facchetti."[96] About the Swiss sim cards, Moggi stated that he used them to circumvent "those [such as Inter Milan and Inter Milan's Telecom] who intercepted us", with reference to transfer operations. He commented: "We had bought Stanković and we also had the contract ready to be presented to the [Italian Football] Federation. After two months the player and his agent disappeared, we found them at Inter Milan."[97] About the wiretaps, Moggi said that he never intruded on the designation of referees, and spoke of incomplete wiretaps for the prosecution. Moggi also reiterated that "[t]hey accused me of going to the referees' locker room but that's not true; others did. Paparesta's kidnapping never happened, it was just a joke."[97]
Moggi maintained that political, economic, and sporting power is in Milan and Rome, not in Turin, a criminal association really existed but it was not his, and was in Milan and Rome, headed by then-FIGC president Franco Carraro,[98] and that then-Milan's vice-president Adriano Galliani held the most power and was in conflict of interest, as he was also Lega Calcio president.[99][100] In 2014, Andrea Agnelli, who became president of Juventus in 2010, stated: "Moggi represents a beautiful and important part of our history. We are the country of Catholicism and forgiveness. We can also forgive people, can't we?" Moggi responded: "Nice words. I thank Andrea Agnelli, but I don't need forgiveness. If anything, I deserve praise for [the 16 trophies won on the pitch for the club]. ... There were twenty clubs and they behaved in the same way but only Juve paid because it bothered."[101] In response to the final verdict in 2015, which came after six hours of delibaration, Moggi said: "We mucked about for nine years and that's not nice because this abnormal trial has come to nothing. Just a lot of expense. In nine years, it has been established that the championship was by the book, the draws were by the book and there were no conversations about designations."[32] He said that it merely let the courts off the hook, not him, and vowed to turn to the European courts in hopes to have his ban from football world lifted.[102]
About the allegations of altered leagues, Moggi responded: "There's only one reality. When I was at Juve, we won two consecutive league titles at most. From 2000 to 2004, they were won by Lazio, Milan, and Roma. Lazio won because of the flood at the stadium with a 74-minute suspension of the [Perugia–Juventus] match. This was something that never happened before. Roma also won thanks to the Nakata case. They made us lose championships for irregular things, at that moment Juve was the weak side."[103] In regards to the controversial 2000 Perugia–Juventus match, to which he regretted not having the team retire and go home,[104] Moggi criticized the match's referee Pierluigi Collina. Collina was particularly liked before and during Calciopoli by Milan's and Rome's clubs, had the same Milan's sponsor, and secretly met with Galliani, who selected him as referee designator due to being Lega Calcio president, at Milan's Leonardo Meani's restaurant. While he would be unaffected by Calciopoli, he was found to be close to Milan, of which he shared the same sponsor (Opel) without the consent of the FIGC's then-referee association president Tullio Lanese, leading to his resignement and retirement, after which he said he was a Lazio supporter. Observers agree that rules were violated.[105][106] Moggi said: "I was accused of being the great manipulator in football, so explain to me how I managed to lose a championship by playing the decisive match in a pool. The truth is that Juve should have left, instead we remained there at the mercy of those who decided and when we took the field we were no longer there. [Collina] certainly spoke to someone on the phone: who it was, we will never know. I'm just saying that by regulation the suspension can't last more than 45 minutes: instead Collina waited almost double."[107] In later years, he further commented: "As it happens, it then comes out of the wiretaps that Collina goes to talk to Galliani and says: 'I will come at midnight, I enter the back door so they don't see me.' If Milan couldn't win, they didn't want Juventus to win either."[108]Carlo Ancelotti, Juventus coach from 1999 to 2001 and Milan coach at the time of Calciopoli, testified in 2010 that he found the Perugia match to be "an odd fact".[109]
About Silvio Berlusconi, Moggi said: "I thanked him and I thank him for his esteem for me, maybe I reserve him a criticism for what he didn't do to the Calciopoli explosion: he knew that innocent people would be penalized, obviously for him too it was a priority to demolish Juventus' domain."[110] Moggi also said that Berlusconi wanted him at Milan, and during a private meeting to discuss the matter revealed to him that "the FIGC possessed some of [Moggi's] wiretaps without any criminal value, of which Galliani (then-vice-president of Milan and president of Lega Calcio), Carraro (then-president of the FIGC), [and] General Pappa, head of the investigations office of the FIGC, were also aware."[110] Moggi stated that those same wiretaps were made public just a few days after.[110] Moggi had earlier said that Galliani made Calciopoli come out because Berlusconi wanted him at Milan. In regard to the dispute between the FIGC and Juventus, Moggi responded to then-FIGC president Carlo Tavecchio: "From the trials, it turns out that there has been no alteration of the championship, there has been no alteration of the referee grids, even 30 referees were acquitted of the charges. I've helped some of these acquitted referees, I've helped many financially. Poor boys, I felt sorry for them, they didn't know how to pay the lawyer. They were ruined by Calciopoli."[103] About the Supreme Court's sentence, Moggi reiterated his innocence of the criminal association charge, and added: "The Supreme Court speaks of power. But power isn't a crime. I had power because I worked well, it was power because of the quality of the work [as general director] I did."[103] Apart from Milan, Moggi said that he was also sought by Inter Milan.[111][112] Citing Gianni Agnelli's quote that "the king's groom must have known all the horse thieves", Moggi discussed how "Agnelli said that because during my time it was full of sons of bitches. And he wanted an expert, one who could stand up to these here. For me it's a compliment."[103]
Other proceedings
In April 2007, the documents relating to the charge against Moggi of kidnapping referee Gianluca Paparesta were sent to the Reggio Calabria prosecutor's office; in the end, the prosecutor filed the case because "the fact does not exist".[113] On 21 January 2009, the preliminary hearing judge (GUP) in Milan acquitted Moggi of the charge of defamation against Inter Milan. Moggi was accused of having defamed Inter Milan as he said that they had saved themselves by negotiating the case of the false passport of Álvaro Recoba without relevant consequences, unlike what happened to Juventus in the Calciopoli case. Gabriele Oriali, at the time an Inter Milan executive, negotiated a sentence of 6 months' imprisonment for receiving stolen goods and forgery. The GUP of Milan considered that Moggi's words were only "expression of the right to criticize, at best imprecise, but not criminally relevant".[114]
On 14 May 2009, the justice of the peace of Lecce acquitted Moggi and referee Massimo De Santis of the charge of sports fraud and match-fixing related to the Lecce–Juventus and Lecce–Fiorentina matches of the 2004–05 Serie A, as sanctioned by the sporting judgements. In particular, the judge established that "the fact described has not been proven in any way" and that "the Judge also does not consider the sentences rendered by the sports justice bodies fully usable since the latter judgment is structurally different from the ordinary judgement. Nor is it believed that the telephone interceptions referred to in the course of the proceedings can have probative value, since they cannot be used in a proceeding other than the one in which they are ordered."[115]
On 24 November 2009, Moggi, along with Giraudo, Roberto Bettega, and Juventus, was acquitted of the charges concerning the management of the club's accounts "because the fact does not exist". Prosecutors had asked for three years in prison for Moggi.[116] On 14 September 2010, Moggi, along with Giraudo, Bettega, Jean-Claude Blanc, and Giovanni Cobolli Gigli, was acquitted of the charge of tax violations on Juventus' financial statements from 2005 to 2008. Turin's judge Eleonora Montserrat Pappalettere accepted the dismissal request presented by the same public prosecutor's office Turin and closed the case opened by an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza.[117] On 11 November 2010, Juventus withdrew the lawsuit against Moggi, Giraudo, and Bettega presented within the same process for the financial statements of the club's old financial management.[118]
On 11 November 2011, the monocratic judge of Rome sentenced Moggi to 4 months' imprisonment and to pay damages of €7,000 to Franco Baldini, who received threats during a trial in which he had to testify.[119] In June 2012, Moggi was sentenced to pay the court costs for the civil lawsuit for defamation brought against Carlo Petrini and Kaos publisher in the light of some sentences in the book Calcio nei coglioni. According to the court of Milan, those sentences are not defamatory but deducible from the report of the Carabinieri also disseminated by the newspapers on the 2005 Offside investigation.[120]
In July 2015, Moggi was acquitted by the Milan court of the charge of defaming former Inter Milan president Giacinto Facchetti in a television broadcast.[121] Moggi had publicly accused Facchetti "of having also requested and obtained special treatment in the refereeing of Inter Milan's matches". The judge dismissed the lawsuit and acquitted Moggi, finding "with certainty a good truthfulness" in his statements and citing the existence of "a sort of lobbying intervention on the part of the-then president of Inter Milan towards the referee class ... , significant of a relationship of a friendly [and] preferential type, [with] heights that are not properly commendable."[122] The sentence was upheld on appeal in 2018,[123] and passed judgment in 2019.[124]
In May 2016, Moggi was sentenced to a €1,000 fine and separate damages for defaming Carabinieri officer Attilio Auricchio, who investigated Calciopoli. The judge made the conditional suspension of the sentence conditional on the payment of a provisional amount of €20,000.[125]
In 2021, Moggi was featured in an episode of Netflix's documentary series Bad Sport about Calciopoli.[129]
Books
Bucchioni, Enzo; D'Ascoli, Mario; Moggi, Luciano (2007). Un calcio nel cuore (in Italian) (paperback ed.). Milan: TEA. ISBN978-88-502-1411-2.
Ligabue, Andrea; Moggi, Luciano (2014). Il pallone lo porto io. Calcio, trattative e spogliatoi: tutto quello che non ho mai detto (in Italian) (hardcover ed.). Milan: Mondadori. ISBN978-88-046-3854-4.
Explanatory notes and quotes
^Writing for Il Foglio, journalist Christian Rocca stated: "For a week, Italians have had media proof that Juventus is buying referees. But this 'proof' comes from a request for dismissal which, on the contrary and without any doubt, proves how Juventus didn't buy the referees."[16] Italian magistrate and public prosecutor Marcello Maddalena justified the dismissal because it is "an investigation undoubtedly destined to last for years and to fill the pages of newspapers and radio and television broadcasts forever, but for the start of which, it is repeated, it hasn't remained at the state (after all the investigations that have been carried out), not even a shred of 'news' that allows it."[16] About Juventus' punishment, Rocca wrote: "In a normal country there would have been a public apology to Juventus and only, I repeat only, a severe ethical and disciplinary judgment against the designator of the referees and the director of a sports club caught having too close relations. Rome and Naples [trials] concern something else, as far as we know: the management of players, not referees."[16]
About the wiretaps, Maddalena stated: "In all the imposing mass of intercepted conversations there emerges an integral attitude, a sort of 'presumption' or 'superiority complex' that could sound like this: 'We're the best, the strongest, the most beautiful, the most everything, therefore we don't need complacent referees or favours but only good, honest, and fair referees, who referee according to the rules... And so we will win.' And in fact all the observations, the comments, the indications (for friendly matches), the suggestions regarding the referees always seem to be placed in the perspective of the search for the best referee for Juve matches, the referee who best guarantees the regular progress and the regular outcome of the sporting competition."[16] Maddalena also stated that Juventus was unfairly penalized, observing that "with regard to any appointments of referees aimed at favouring Juventus, the objective analysis of the documentation not only doesn't confirm the initial investigative hypothesis, but on the contrary, evidence of the opposite sign is obtained, indicative of the absence of irregularities and of more or not disguised of referee designations piloted by Pairetto."[16] According to Rocca, "they didn't even enter the trial because the same public prosecutor who first hypothesized against them the crime of conspiracy, then corruption, and finally sports fraud – and for this reason entered them in the register of suspects – decided that the elements collected, that is to say the phone calls we read in the newspapers, were not only not sufficient to support the accusatory hypothesis in a trial, but they weren't even enough to continue the investigation neither for the crime of association, nor for the crime of corruption or for the crime of sports fraud."[16]
^Judge Corrado De Biase, 1980 Totonero chief investigator, was quoted as saying: "I have only read detached sentences in the newspapers, I don't think I have read about a sporting offence to alter the result. I don't seem to have seen matches bought or sold. When I hear from Commissioner Rossi that he will do everything himself and that can come to judgment even without questioning, there is something that does not add up."[41] Lawyer Gaetano Scalise commented: "The special commissioner of the FIGC has given us only three days to study thousands and thousands of papers and present briefs. Do you understand what I'm talking about?"[41]
^Writing for Il Tirreno, journalist Enzo Biagi stated: "[This was a] crazy ruling, and not because football is a clean environment. A crazy ruling because it's built on nothing, on wiretaps that are difficult to interpret and can't be proposed in a [trial] procedure worthy of the name, a crazy sentence because it punishes those who were guilty only of living in a certain environment, all seasoned with a process that was a re-edition of the Holy Inquisition in a modern key."[16] Biagi wondered whether Moggi has been identified as "the villain to be fed to the populace" amid numerous other scandals in the country at that time, including the SISMI-Telecom scandal.[16] Biagi's words would be later revoked due to the Calciopoli bis developments.[48][49]
^Among others, former Milan and Italy national football team coach Arrigo Sacchi commented that Moggi was a scapegoat for "an environment with connivance and collusion", and of a sporting culture that "did not allow us to know how to lose".[50] About the court's rulings, Sacchi stated: "We had three judicial bodies and all three expressed themselves in a different way from the other: either the first sentence was wrong, or the second or the third."[16]
^De Biase said: "First of all, we must have the courage to affirm a reality: this summer's procedure gave birth to an authentic legal abort. When I speak of 'legal abort' I take full responsibility for what I say. When you want to complete a procedure in two weeks that would take at least 6 months just for a correct investigative process, it can only result in a legal abort. When, for reasons of time, a degree of judgment is received, when the defendants are prevented from bringing witnesses, dossiers and films in their defence, but only 15 minutes are allowed for a defence, one can only speak of legal abort. When the defence lawyers of the accused are not granted the full texts of the wiretaps, alleging that they are not pertinent, we can only speak of legal abort. Finally, when a title is disassigned to a club, Juventus, to assign it to another, Inter Milan, before the verdict of the first preliminary iter [justice proceedings] is pronounced, then we are well beyond legal abort. It's not a problem of ordinary or sporting justice: in any country that defines itself as civil, any penalties and sanctions must be imposed after a guilty verdict has been recorded, never before. And don't talk to me about UEFA regulations or lists to be given to the same for the European cups: the rights of the accused, including that of being able to defend themselves with the means that the law makes available to them, come before a football match."[16] About punishments, De Biase stated: "I, on my own, can only reiterate the concept already expressed: a penalty of 8/10 points, a fine, and a ban of Moggi and Giraudo for 10/12 months, this was the appropriate penalty in my opinion. Any parallel with the story of 1980 is unthinkable: here there're no traces of offence, nor of money or checks. The environmental offence isn't a crime covered by any code, unless we're talking about air pollution."[16]
^De Biase commented on the sentence of Francesco Saverio Borrelli, who spoke of a structured illicit, which was not part of the Code of Sports Justice, as a crime committed by Moggi and his associates. He said: "We're talking about a structured illicit. But what is it? It doesn't exist. They want to make it clear that there's something different, anomalous. But structured illicit, not at all. There's no sporting illicit. We can't talk about things that don't exist in the sports judicial system. I still haven't seen any proof of sporting illicit. Until now, what I see is the violation of Article 1 of the Sports Justice Code, which requires members to behave according to the principles of loyalty, correctness, and probity. But of what we have read to date, it doesn't prove to me that there was an attempt to alter a match."[16] About Borrelli's role, journalist Giorgio Bocca stated: "The appointment of Borrelli to direct the investigation into the great football scandal is the litmus test, the chemical reagent, the proof of truth, the fall of lies, the naked king of the Berlusconi people who 'don't give up', who don't tolerate returns to justice, who conceive democracy only as an alliance of the strongest and richest clans."[41]
^About the behavior of Juventus executives at the time and their lack of defance, De Biase stated: "I can't know why the Juventus owners has moved in a certain way, but I would say, 99%, that the affair was skilfully managed by the leaders of the Turin club, starting with the request from Zaccone, who left everyone stunned. Zaccone isn't incompetent, as many believe, but he was only an actor in this story."[16] De Biase further said: "The point that makes me think that Zaccone acted on input from the owners is another, namely the way in which the top management of Juventus moved, with that fake appeal to the TAR. How, I wonder, you dismiss the executives, practically pleading guilty, then you watch inert and impassive a media and judicial destruction against your club and then you're threatening to resort to the TAR? It's the concept of closing the barn when the oxen have fled, if you think about it."[16]
About the club's renounce to the TAR appeal, De Biase said: "First you let yourself be massacred without lifting a finger, you have the title disassigned, you have the calendars drawn up for the European championships and cups and then you threaten to go to the TAR, trumpeting everything in the newspapers? It looks much like a political move to appease the wrath of the fans, I think. If Zaccone, who is a man of value and experience, would have had the mandate to avoid the disaster he would have moved in a different way, in the sense that he would have pointed out these 'anomalies' in the time between the trial and the announcement of the verdicts. That, in fact, was the right moment to threaten to appeal to the TAR, when the sentences had not yet been written, but had to be done in camera caritatis, asking for a meeting with Ruperto, Sandulli, and Palazzi, and not in front of the journalists of La Gazzetta dello Sport."[16] De Biase concluded: "Please note that I'm not discussing the high strategy of the forensic art, but the basic principles, the ABC of the profession, the things that are taught to the boys who come to the studio to do a traineeship: if you, the defence attorney, think you have weapons to play, you ask for a meeting with the judge and the public prosecution, in the period between the trial and the verdict, and point out that, if the response is judged too severe, you will use them. And here there were weapons in industrial quantities. Then, in the face of a fait accompli, who takes the responsibility of stopping a machine that grinds billions of euros, so as to be the sixth industry in the country?"[16]
^Giovanni Cobolli Gigli, the Juventus chairman at the time, defended the club's choice. In 2014, he said: "As has already been said several times, we had received heavy warnings and pressure from UEFA which had threatened to exclude us from international competitions for the next few years. And at that point we were cornered and inevitably had to act that way. ... And I repeat, it was an inevitable decision to avoid heavy sanctions and very much negative repercussions for the club's future."[68] In February 2019, Cobolli Gigli denied that it was a public plea bargain, and said: "The plea deal is an act of cowards and Juventus did not negotiate during Calciopoli, [we] simply accepted the sentence."[71]
^In 2006, there were two separate bodies within the FIGC judiciary, namely the investigating body, constituted by the investigation office and chaired by Borrelli, and the prosecuting body, represented by FIGC prosecutor Stefano Palazzi. Additionally, the 2006 sports proceedings were held in the first-instance trial court before the CAF, chaired by Cesare Ruperto (president of the Constitutional Court in 2001 and 2002), and not before the FIGC's Disciplinary Commissions due to the involvement of FIGC executives (Franco Carraro, Cosimo Maria Ferri, and Innocenzo Mazzini). Consequently, the appeal judge was Piero Sandulli of the CAF.[73]
^The violation charged to Juventus and its two top sports executives, Moggi and Giraudo, is often defined with the term illecito strutturato ("structurred illicit"). The alleged offence was not a case identified by the Sports Justice Code and was introduced in the new code following the Calciopoli events; in sports judgments, there is no mention of illecito strutturato, which was popularized through some media. The latter term was given by Borrelli, who became head of the FIGC investigation office upon the appointment of the FIGC extraordinary commissioner Guido Rossi to replace Italo Pappa, the resigning general of the Guardia di Finanza. With this term, Borrelli wanted to describe the alleged existence of a stable and irregular network of relations between the Juventus management, the federal top management, and the refereeing world.[73]
References
^ abBurke, Jason (30 July 2006). "Paradiso to inferno". The Observer. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
^"Moggi, addio al calcio 'Mi hanno ucciso l'anima'". La Repubblica (in Italian). 14 May 2006. Retrieved 24 January 2023. 'I would like to ask you a courtesy, not to ask me questions. Also because I no longer have the will, the strength... I no longer have the soul. They killed her. Tomorrow I will resign as general manager of Juventus. From tonight the world of football is no longer mine. Now I will dedicate myself to defending myself from all the bad things that have been said and done towards me.'
^O'Brien, Jonathan (16 July 2006). "The Italian Job". The Sunday Business Post. Archived from the original on 24 June 2008. Retrieved 24 January 2023. 'I have neither the strength nor the willingness to answer any questions,' Moggi told the press on May 13. 'I'll think only to defend myself from all allegations and wicked actions. 'I miss my soul, it has been killed. Tomorrow, I'll be resigning. 'Tonight, the football world isn't my world any more.'
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrCambiaghi, Emilio; Dent, Arthur (2007). Il processo illecito(PDF) (1st ed.). Stampa Indipendente. pp. 5–6, 9–10, 47–57. Retrieved 24 January 2023 – via Ju29ro, 15 April 2010.
^Castellani, Massimiliano (8 November 2011). "Gazzoni Frascara: 'Fiorentina e Juve mi devono 70 milioni. Calciopoli...'". Avvenire (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023 – via Fiorentina.it. '... [Juventus] was acquitted in the ordinary [justice] proceedings as Moggi himself also acted out of personal interest [to favour Lazio and Fiorentina]. ... .'
^"Penale Sent. Sez. 3 Num. 36350 Anno 2015"(PDF). Italgiure (in Italian). Supreme Court of Cassation, Third Penal Section. 24 March 2015. p. 138. Archived from the original(PDF) on 15 January 2016. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
^Mahoney, Tony (31 March 2015). "Tavecchio tells Juventus: Drop €443m lawsuit and we'll talk about your two Scudetti". Goal.com. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 24 January 2023. The Calciopoli scandal in 2006 resulted in the Bianconeri being relegated from Serie A and stripped of two league titles, with the club and former general manager Luciano Moggi accused of having an exclusive relationship with referee designators. However, civil and criminal trials have since determined that Juventus and Moggi did not enjoy such an advantage and that the punishments handed out in 2006 were based on incomplete evidence, and Moggi's prison sentence was also written off last week following his appeal at the Court of Cassation. As a result of the subsequent findings, Juventus have filed a lawsuit against the FIGC and are claiming €443m for lost revenue and damage to their reputation.
^ abCapasso, Stefano (7 February 2012). "Motivazioni sentenza Calciopoli: 'Il campionato 2004/2005 è stato regolare'". Calcio Blog (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023. 'Neither can we overlook the data of the resizing of the scope of the accusation which derives from the partiality with which the events of the 2004/2005 championship were examined, to run after only Moggi's misdeeds, of which modalities have been ascertained, as regards the sports fraud, to the limit of the existence of the crime of attempt, with the consequent further difficulty of hooking up to the responsibility of the employer, supplier of the occasion for the criminal action.'
^ abBeha, Oliviero (7 February 2012). "Il 'caso Moggi' e le colpe della stampa: non fa inchieste, (di)pende dai verbali, non sa leggere le sentenze". Tiscali (in Italian). Archived from the original on 12 March 2012. Retrieved 24 January 2023. ... the motivations in 558 pages are summarized as follows. 1) Championships not altered (therefore championships unjustly taken away from Juve...), matches not fixed, referees not corrupted, investigations conducted incorrectly by the investigators of the Public Prosecutor's Office (interceptions of the Carabinieri which were even manipulated in the confrontation in the Chamber). 2) The SIM cards, the foreign telephone cards that Moggi has distributed to some referees and designators, would be proof of the attempt to alter and condition the system, even without the effective demonstration of the rigged result. 3) Moggi's attitude, like a real 'telephone' boss, is invasive even when he tries to influence the [Italian Football Federation] and the national team, see the phone calls with Carraro and Lippi. 4) That these phone calls and this 'mafia' or 'sub-mafia' promiscuity aimed at 'creating criminal associations' turned out to be common practice in the environment as is evident, does not acquit Moggi and C.: and therefore here is the sentence. ... Finally point 1), the so-called positive part of the motivations, that is, in fact everything is regular. And then the scandal of 'Scommettopoli' [the Italian football scandal of 2011] in which it's coming out that the 2010–2011 championship [won by Milan] as a whole with tricks is to be considered really and decidedly irregular? The Chief Prosecutor of Cremona, Di Martino, says so for now, while sports justice takes its time as always, but I fear that many will soon repeat it, unless everything is silenced. With all due respect to those who want the truth and think that Moggi has objectively become the 'scapegoat'. Does the framework of information that does not investigate, analyze, compare, and take sides out of ignorance or bias seem slightly clearer to you?
^Vaciago, Guido (28 July 2015). "Cassazione: 'Sistema inquinato'. Ma non spiega i misteri di Calciopoli". Tuttosport (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023. However, the accusatory castle exists, built with interceptions expertly selected by the 170,000. That is, there are the famous 'barbecues', or the telephone calls between Moggi and the designator Bergamo, during which the two established the referees to be included in the drawing scheme. Phone calls that have particularly affected the Cassation which cites them as an example of pollution. In short, the fact that other managers (Meani from Milan, Facchetti from Inter, just to give an example, but the list could be long) also called Bergamo to plead their case and explicitly ask this or that referee isn't taken into consideration (Collina, for example...). But then, how many domes were there? The Cassation does not tell us, even if it admits between the lines that 'the system of preparing the grids was quite widespread' and admits that the developments of the behaviors of Meani and Facchetti (explicitly mentioned) 'were not investigated in depth'.
^Di Santo, Giampiero (27 April 2007). "Calciopoli, la Cupola era una bufala". Italia Oggi (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023. The suspicion, in short, is that the path of summary justice was chosen, to eliminate from the scene characters like Moggi, ultimately expelled from Juve and then condemned by sports justice based on wiretapping which, are the words of the sentences, did not prove none of the allegations. Based on the first interceptions ordered by the Turin's public prosecutor and prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello, who had ordered the dismissal of the investigation opened for alleged sports fraud already in July 2005 on the grounds that, for the crime in question, 'are not allowed.' The prosecutor had underlined the 'weakness of the accusatory hypothesis.' Yet, according to the authors, the investigation that led to the commissioner of the FIGC, the landing in via Allegri of Guido Rossi, and the new head of the investigation office, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, started from that weak accusatory hypothesis, to the involvement of referees and designators, of six first and second row clubs (in addition to Juve, Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio, Reggina and Arezzo) and, finally, to the real sentence for a few. Indeed, only for Moggi and Juve, kicked out and relegated to B.
^Beha, Oliviero (10 November 2011). "Calciopoli, Oliviero Beha 'A Napoli con il machete'". Il Fatto Quotidiano (in Italian). Archived from the original on 11 November 2011. Retrieved 24 January 2023. Moggi, branded as the Al Capone of football, served perfectly as a stopper for a bottle of bad liqueur for public drunkenness, ending up in a trap.
^Zunnino, Corrado (27 July 2006). "Salvati perché la gente voleva così". La Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023. 'We recognized everything about the CAF ruling, apart from two episodes: the falsified championship, the repeated offences of Juventus, [and] the existence of a system.'
^Cambiaghi, Emilio; Dent, Arthur (2007). Il processo illecito(PDF) (1st ed.). Stampa Indipendente. p. 52. Retrieved 24 January 2023 – via Ju29ro, 15 April 2010. 'Ours is a purely statistical study. We are not interested, nor are we able to establish, if Moggi and the other executives under investigation could influence the matches, but from our point of view we can highlight three hypotheses more than valid: either there was no referee conditioning in the 2004–05 championship, or it existed but did not produce relevant results, or it's possible to think of a clash between executives for the acquisition of the football system that gave rise to winning and losing clubs in that which we can define as a 'parallel championship'.
^ abVaciago, Guido (28 July 2015). "Cassazione: 'Sistema inquinato'. Ma non spiega i misteri di Calciopoli". Tuttosport (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023. Justice decided that Moggi and Giraudo actually 'polluted' the system, it decided so in 2006 and did not want to know or understand other truths. Indeed, it had already decided it during the investigations, when all the phone calls that could exonerate or alleviate the position of Juventus' executives had not been taken into consideration, to the point of dismantling the very concept of the Cupola. Moggi and Giraudo, therefore, 'polluted' the system: a term that serves to dodge the fact that no judge has ever returned enough evidence to affirm that championship (the subject of investigation was only 2004–05) has actually been altered. Indeed, in the first instance sentence we basically read the opposite.
^Cambiaghi, Emilio; Dent, Arthur (2007). Il processo illecito(PDF) (1st ed.). Stampa Indipendente. pp. 9–10. Retrieved 24 January 2023 – via Ju29ro, 15 April 2010. The Juventus defence, among other things, objects that a sum of several Articles 1 (unfair and dishonest sporting conduct) cannot lead to an indictment for Article 6 (sporting offence), using for example the metaphor that so many defamations do not carry a murder conviction: an unimpeachable objection. ... Hence the grotesque concept of 'standings altered without any match-fixing'. The 'Calciopoli' rulings state that there is no match-fixing. That the championship under investigation, 2004–2005, is to be considered regular. But that the Juventus management has achieved effective standings advantages for Juventus FC even without altering the individual matches. In practice, Juventus was convicted of murder, with no one dead, no evidence, no accomplices, no murder weapon. Only for the presence of a hypothetical motive.
^ abIngram, Sam (20 December 2021). "Calciopoli Scandal: Referee Designators As Desired Pawns". ZicoBall. Retrieved 24 January 2023. FIGC's actions in relegating Juventus and handing the title to Inter Milan were somewhat peculiar. Of course, Moggi and Juventus deserved punishment; that is not up for dispute. However, the severity of the ruling and the new location for the Scudetto was unprecedented and arguably should never have happened. The final ruling in the Calciopoli years later judged that Juventus had never breached article 6. As a result, the Serie A champions should never have encountered a shock 1–1 draw away to Rimini in the season's curtain-raiser. Nor should they have trounced Piacenza 4–0 in Turin or handed a 5–1 thrashing away to Arezzo in Tuscany. The findings stated that some club officials had violated article 6, but none had originated from Juventus. FIGC created a structured article violation with their decision-making. This means that instead of finding an article 6 breach, several article 1 violations were pieced together to create evidence damning to warrant relegation from Italy's top flight. Article 1 violations in Italian football usually command fines, bans, or points deductions, but certainly not relegation.
^Nardo, Sandro (1 May 2016). "Calciopoli (o Farsopoli?) dieci anni dopo". WeMadeHi5tory (in Italian). Retrieved 25 February 2023. The ordinary trial, divided into the usual 3 levels of judgement, ended in 2015 and reached its conclusions after 7 years of interrogations, hearings, expert reports, and evaluations, which are the following: * Luciano Moggi was convicted of conspiracy to commit crimes: no evidence of effective tampering with tenders was found, but the mere fact of having distributed encrypted Swiss SIM cards (not interceptable) to referees and referee designators proves that he had launched an illicit network of unauthorized communications. * The 2004–2005 championship is regular: despite having ascertained the existence of an attempt by Moggi to alter the matches, however, there is no proof that this attempt was actually successful. * Juventus is totally extraneous to the facts: the club is recognized as extraneous to the behavior of Luciano Moggi and, by virtue of this extraneousness, all the requests for compensation made by the companies that had filed a civil action are rejected.
^Rossini, Claudio (5 March 2014). "Calciopoli e la verità di comodo". Blasting News (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023. Juventus has been acquitted, the offending championships (2004/2005 and 2005/2006) have been declared regular, and the reasons for the conviction of Luciano Moggi are vague; mostly, they condemn his position, that he was in a position to commit a crime. In short, be careful to enter a shop without surveillance because even if you don't steal, you would have had the opportunity. And go on to explain to your friends that you're honest people after the morbid and pro-sales campaign of the newspapers. ... a club has been acquitted, and no one has heard of it, and whoever has heard of it, they don't accept it. The verdict of 2006, made in a hurry, was acceptable, that of Naples was not. The problem then lies not so much in vulgar journalism as in readers who accept the truths that are convenient. Juventus was, rightly or wrongly, the best justification for the failures of others, and it was in popular sentiment, as evidenced by the new controversies concerning 'The System.' But how? Wasn't the rotten erased? The referees since 2006 make mistakes in good faith, the word of Massimo Moratti (the only 'honest'). ... it isn't a question of tifo, but of a critical spirit, of the desire to deepen and not be satisfied with the headlines (as did Oliviero Beha, a well-known Viola [Fiorentina] fan, who, however, drew conclusions outside the chorus because, despite enjoying it as a tifoso, he suffered as a journalist. He wasn't satisfied and went into depth. He was one of the few).
^Basu, Rangan (30 October 2015). "Calciopoli 2006: The match-fixing scandal that got Juventus relegated". Sportskeeda. Retrieved 25 February 2023. Voluminous but inconclusive evidence from the wiretaps showed the then Juventus sporting director Luciano Moggi communicating in an 'exclusive' manner with the referee designators of Serie A ... However, there is no proof which suggests definitively, that the matches were rigged. No players or referees have been shown to accept brown envelopes. ... The Naples tribunal ruled that the 2004–05 season was unaltered by any illicit means and that the results (and therefore, the championship title won by Juventus) were valid and regular. Moggi was charged with attempted sporting fraud – but the attempts were found to be completely unsuccessful in altering the results. It is also important to note, as the proceedings in the High Court have found, that Moggi was far from alone in his possible attempts at illicit behaviour. New evidence indicated similar dubious actions from the directors of Milan and Inter among others. Calciopoli in short was both more widespread and less influential than originally thought and the original verdict from the FIGC that pointed the finger at Juventus clearly deserves the revision it has undergone over the years. Cannavaro, Trezeguet and Buffon were all cleared of any wrongdoing by the Naples Tribunal.
^Coccia, Pasquale (18 January 2020). "Il contado tifa per la zebra". Il manifesto (in Italian). Retrieved 8 February 2023. De Luna: We consulted the company financial statements, and noted the escalation of the emoluments that Moggi, Giraudo, and Bettega received. We don't have certain elements to be able to say that at that moment there was an attempt to take over Juventus, but those figures are impressive. Furthermore, there are some anomalies of the Agnellis which leave the door open to this type of hypothesis. The Calciopoli investigation was born out of a Turin investigation by the prosecutor Guariniello on the Juventus doping case, [in which] the interceptions of Moggi's conversations with the referees emerge. Guariniello sends the files to the boss Maddalena, notes that there are no crimes from a criminal point of view, but perhaps from a sporting point of view. Maddalena keeps the files for three months, then sends them to the [Italian] Football Federation. This period lasts a little over a year. Do you really [want to believe] that Juve didn't know what was going on? I have the impression that the Agnelli family took advantage of this opportunity to stop an attempt to take over the Moggi-Giraudo-Bettega company.
^Lawton, James (27 January 2007). "Fallen gods of Calcio". The Independent. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
^Bocci, Alessandro (1 September 2006). "La Juve ritira il ricorso al Tar". Corriere della Sera (in Italian). Retrieved 10 March 2023. After four hours of discussion, in the elegant building on Corso Galileo Ferraris, in the heart of Turin, the moderate line recently promoted by President Cobolli Gigli won. Jean Claude Blanc, the managing director, the man who had advocated confrontation with the [Italian] Football Federation, has taken a step back by adapting to the majority. ... A small group of fans met outside the Juventus headquarters and targeted Cobolli Gigli and Blanc. 'You have ruined a hundred years of history', ... Then the words of coach Deschamps at the end of the Tim trophy at San Siro are striking: 'The players and I have some difficulty understanding, maybe we don't know everything, but we don't understand the reason for the appeal withdrawn. A decision had been made, then it changed, I expect explanations. What is certain is that we will fight all season', said the French coach with a controversial air. ... Indeed, there has been a change. But Federcalcio and Coni have not provided any precise guarantee to Juventus. 'There was no negotiation,' they said from via Allegri. Rossi, however, did not hide his satisfaction with the intention of the lost sheep returned to the fold to participate actively in the renewal and organization of football. Petrucci, on the other hand, thanked John Elkann, who followed the matter personally, and Montezemolo 'for the call to common sense and serenity, fully understood.'
^"Juventus, Luciano Moggi scrive a Lapo Elkann: 'Chi sono i veri responsabili di Calciopoli'". Libero (in Italian). 14 May 2021. ISSN1591-0423. Retrieved 6 March 2023. It was enough to look at what happened in Portugal, where a top-flight team, relegated for ascertained collusion with (arrested) referees, was reinstated following the appeal made to the counterpart of the Italian TAR. For Juve it would have been even easier, because in the sporting trial no crime was ascertained and in the ordinary one the referees were all acquitted. The prosecutor had to resort to the 'anticipated crime' for something never committed or even thought of.
^"Calciopoli, Moggi risponde a Lapo Elkann tornando a parlare dello scandalo di 15 anni fa". MondoBiancoNero.com (in Italian). 14 May 2021. Retrieved 6 March 2023. 'Dear Lapo, my certainties about the perpetrators of this farce are known and always addressed to those who received the thanks of Blatter, president of Fifa at the time, for having Juve withdraw the appeal to the TAR which, if maintained, would have kept the club in Serie A.'
^Pelucchi, Roberto; Vernazza, Sebastiano (27 June 2006). "Moggi e i pm, ecco i verbali". La Gazzetta dello Sport (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023.
^Boffi, Emanuele (29 July 2006). "Calciopoli. E se lo scandalo fosse il modo con cui ce l'hanno raccontato?". Tempi (in Italian). Retrieved 24 January 2023. 'I wonder why the Italian media say every possible abomination on the potential conflict of interest of Adriano Galliani, president of Lega [Calcio] and executive of Milan, but don't use the same criterion towards Guido Rossi, extraordinary commissioner of the [Italian Football] Federation and former executive of Moratti's Inter Milan from 1995 to 1999, and of Gigi Agnolin, appointed commissioner of referees but still former executive of Roma from 1995 to 2000 (instead of Moggi, look what a combination).' (Christian Rocca, ilfoglio.it/camillo, 3 July) ... .
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