Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: Marco BERTORELLO 19:16 pm, April 20, 2023

Juventus could get away with it. The Italian Olympic Committee's Guarantee College is expected to consider that the 15-point penalty due to questionable transfers should be "reassessed". A lifting of sanction that would allow Juventus to climb to 3rd place.

The 15 penalty points awarded to Juventus Turin in the Italian league due to questionable transfers were suspended on Thursday by the Guarantee College of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI), which considered that the sanction should be reassessed. Juve therefore recovers, at least temporarily, its 15 points and goes back to third place in the Italian Championship, pending a new judgment of the Court of Appeal of the Italian Football Federation, according to this decision rendered the day after the examination of the appeal of the Turin club which requested an outright cancellation of the sanction.

In its decision, the Guarantee Committee, the highest level of sporting justice in Italy, said it had accepted Juve's appeal against this penalty while referring the case to the Federation "for it to review its evaluations". This decision paves the way for a possible reduction in the number of points that could ultimately be sanctioned Juve, according to several Italian media.

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Overvalued capital gains

The most successful club in Italian football was sanctioned on January 20 with a withdrawal of fifteen points for having artificially reduced its losses by realizing capital gains deemed overvalued during the sale of certain players between 2018 and 2021. In parallel with this procedure before the sporting justice, Juve, a club listed on the stock exchange, is also the subject of proceedings before the ordinary justice for alleged accounting fraud, related both to these so-called "fictitious" capital gains and to "maneuvers" to defer the payment of certain players' salaries.

According to the Turin prosecutor's office, Juve officially announced the non-payment of several months' wages during the Covid pandemic but actually agreed with their players, via private agreements, to pay a large part of it in a subsequent financial year. In December, the prosecutor's office requested that the club and twelve managers and former leaders be sent to trial. The court is due to continue considering the referral request at a hearing on 10 May.