According to reports, the inquiry into Victor Osimhen’s relocation from Lille to Naples has been requested by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Naples for an additional six months.
In a deal costing €72 million with an additional €10 million in add-ons, the Nigerian forward left the Ligue 1 team for the Partenopei in September 2020. When it was revealed that almost €20 million of the transfer was funded through player exchanges, it attracted a lot of attention at the time.
The Naples Public Prosecutor’s Office is looking into the striker from Nigeria’s actions because they think that maybe faked capital gains were employed in the transaction.
According to La Repubblica, the Naples Public Prosecutor’s Office wants an additional six months to complete its probe into the Osimhen transfer because it thinks the four relatively unknown players involved in the deal had exaggerated prices.
Based on that Osimhen move, prosecutor Francesco De Falco and assistant prosecutor Sergio Amato suspect that Napoli may have created fraudulent communications in their financial accounts for July 2020 to June 2021.
Similar to the predicament Juventus are currently in, legal proceedings against the Partenopei could be restarted should fresh evidence surface.
Orestis Karnezis, a goalkeeper from Greece who was 35 at the time of the transaction, was valued at about €21 million together with young players Claudio Manzi, Luigi Liguori, and Ciro Palmieri, all of whom have since left Lille.
Aurelio De Laurentiis’ criminal attorney, Fabio Fulgeri, is optimistic that Napoli would achieve a “favorable decision” in the inquiry into the transfer of Osimhen in the meanwhile.
The truth about backup goalkeeper Karnezis and young players Claudio Manzi, Luigi Liguori, and Ciro Palmieri, who were included in the Osimhen trade, has been questioned because €20 million of that sum was made up through player exchanges.
If Napoli supporters should be concerned about the probe was the first question Fulgeri was asked while speaking to Radio Crc.
“It’s a question that many of you are asking me, unfortunately, I’m a simple criminal lawyer, the sporting trial ended positively for our team.
“The investigations are going in the direction of a deepening for the material to be acquired, but they are going in the direction of a favorable outcome.
“We are talking about a false accounting investigation concerning the Osimhen operation. The investigation started in France.”
In the Juventus capital gains case, which resulted in a 15-point deduction from their score by the FIGC court, he raised the possibility of any parallels.
“The Osimhen case I don’t think can be compared to the Juventus case, Napoli didn’t do business with Juventus so they are not involved. If no new elements emerge everything should end well.
“An extension has been requested in order to study the material acquired, it takes the necessary time to judge the documents acquired.
“I cannot even know what the object of the verifications is, the investigations are secret, but the outlook is that the deal took place in a fair manner without falsification of the balance sheets.”
Fulgeri speaking, he said, “Grassani is in charge of sports justice, but having already analysed the same allegations and having expressed a favourable opinion, I don’t think things can change unless new elements emerge.”
