Doubts continue to emerge about owned by AC Milan and on the correctness of the transfer of shares from Elliott and Red Bird (club purchased on 31 August 2022 for 1.2 billion, half of which was lent to it by the seller Elliott through the issue of financial products, the “vendor loan”) after the searches on 12 March of the Financial Police. In the aftermath of the blitz, the FIGC has opened an investigation and the current CEO Furlani, investigated together with the former Gazidis, would have already been heard by the federal prosecutor Chiné.
The accounts man
According to the reconstructions of Republic, a recent document would reveal that Red Bird is not the real owner of Milan, which instead belongs to another investment fund based in the Netherlands. The Corriere della Sera instead he mentions the name of the current administrative director Aldo Savi, the man of accounts, who is said to have provided during a hearing one of the main clues on the basis of which the Milan prosecutor’s office has been building the accusatory castle for weeks: a sort of presentation, received from a manager of the RedBird fund, Elizabeth Owen, of the current structure prepared for talks with investors from the Arab world. On this document there was a scheme according to which the investigators would think that the famous loan made in 2022 by the seller Elliott to the buyer RedBird still today «guarantee Elliott ownership of part of Milan». Savi, once consulted by the GdF, would have defined it as «strange» as reported by CorSera, because in his opinion he proposed to potential Saudi buyers not the possible sale of Milan shares held by RedBird but rather the sale of a piece of RedBird’s debt to Elliott. Furthermore, the same manager would have reported his impression that the daily management of the club still has a strong influence from Elliott through the latter’s former men such as Scaroni, Furlani, Cocirio and others.
What Milan risks, possible sanctions
The club he is not under investigation by the Milan prosecutor’s office. From a sporting point of view, however, he faces challenges possible sanctions. «Violations in management and economic matters». Two pages of the Football Federation’s sports justice code outline the risk that Milan would face if the anomalies in the transition from Elliott to RedBird were certified. Providing “false, reticent or partial” information regarding a transfer of ownership opens up the punitive horizons outlined in article 31 and explored in greater detail in article 8, from the penalization of one or more points in the ranking (minimum sanction) to relegation, up to exclusion from the championship for the most serious facts. To all this we should then include the provisions of the art. 4 which imposes “loyalty, probity and correctness”. In short, the scenario is complex and full of regulatory facets. The investigators’ suspicion is that the club may have in some way hindered the exercise of the functions of the supervisory authority, in the case of professional football entrusted to Covisoc for ordinary management and, when there is a change of ownership, also to Coaps, the commission that establishes whether new investors meet certain requirements of good repute and financial solidity.
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