Italian football federation acquits Andrea Agnelli, others in plusvalenza trial

What was expected to be a long legal battle between Juventus and the Italian football federation has come to a sudden end Friday, as the trial over suspicious transfer activity came to halt less than a week after getting underway.

Juventus President Andrea Agnelli and the rest of the club’s main front office members — as well as former Director of Football Fabio Paratici — were all facing lengthy suspensions for their alleged roles in the investigation that involved inflated transfer values on the clubs’ balance sheets. Outside of of Agnelli, Napoli owner and chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis was the other main name that was facing a ban.

After months of investigating the case, the actual trial began just this past Tuesday. One of the main arguments against Juventus was the swap deal from the summer of 2020 that involved Arthur coming to Turin from Barcelona and Miralem Pjanic going the other way. Arthur, who has had a tough first two years with Juventus, had a €72 million fee attached to him while Pjanic went to Barcelona for €60 million.

Juventus’ lawyers and others argued that there was no definitive way to gauge what a player’s transfer value really is. Napoli’s lawyers argued earlier this week that prosecutors had had their own transfer values for players after compiling data from Transfermarkt.com.

This is not totally the end of Juve’s legal troubles, though, as the club is still being investigated by prosecutors in Turin over alleged inflated capital gains from 2019 to 2021.