When the then president of Ac Cesena, Igor Campedelli, tasked him in 2012 with preparing a recovery plan, Augusto Balestra found a company “in distress”, burdened above all by several debts to the treasury, but “not insolvent”. And once the fruits of his work had matured, which he did together with Fabio Fabbri (another consultant of “Orienta Partners”, who died just over two years ago), almost 10 million euros arrived from a pool of financiers (who then became partners and finally administrators of Cavalluccio (some of whom are now on trial for the collapse) improved things. They were used to pay the players’ back wages, a precondition for being able to register for the championship, which happened. And so, when he left the Juventus club, “as of 30 June 2013, it had been secured and there was full business continuity”.
This, in short, is the picture painted by Balestra, a 66-year-old manager from Forlì, who gave an important testimony at the hearing of the trial on the collapse of AC Cesena which took place yesterday in court in Forlì. For the rescue plan he and Fabbri received 430 thousand euros in compensation: a significant sum that leads one to think that, despite the crisis, there was still a fair amount of liquidity in the coffers of the company chaired by Campedelli. And this, together with the testimony given, sounds in contrast with the accusatory thesis, put forward by the prosecutor Francesca Rago, according to which a club was artfully kept alive which in reality had already blown up, with illegal forcing, such as the capital gains created with Chievo (with transfer market maneuvers involving players from the youth sector).
In addition to Balestra, an accountant from Chievo and a coach of the youth teams of that team were also heard as witnesses and the discussion once again shifted above all to the suspicious exchanges and sales of alleged football promises on that Cesena-Verona axis . The accountant made it clear that at the end of the season it is normal to “use” the transfer market also to sort out the balance sheets. He then added that he had noticed that there was a large turnover of youth players between the two clubs, at similar figures and which seemed high, but the president of Chievo, Luca Campedelli, repeated that he felt he had the right to freely give an evaluation economic to a still young player based on the potential he glimpsed.
Next hearing on June 25th, when Gabriele Sebaste will be heard, who at the time led the Financial Police and coordinated the investigations that brought to light the situation of failure, which resulted in the crash and is now under the scrutiny of the magistrates. Eight defendants remained, after some suspects left the scene, in the most sensational case, that of former president Giorgio Lugaresi, taking plea deals.
