By Andrew Warshaw
June 25 – Italian football, already marred by a damaging match-fixing scandal, has been plunged into even graver off-the-field crisis when police revealed that 18 of the 20 top-flight clubs had been raided as part of a tax and money laundering investigation over the buying and selling of players.
Altogether 41 clubs were targeted, documents seized and premises searched in an apparently coordinated operation that also included 11 Serie B clubs and 12 from the lower divisions.
None of the team names were officially released and none of the transferred players identified but the news will come as a shock not only to FIFA and UEFA but every overseas club that has done business with Italy.
The probe is also said to involve 12 player agents and a number of foreign teams.
The operation was apparently ordered by a court in Naples in connection with crimes of criminal conspiracy, international tax evasion, money laundering and invoice falsification.
A statement by Naples prosecutors added that the clubs involved in the searches were under investigation for alleged conspiracy to avoid payment of “huge amounts of money” to tax authorities during the transfer of players.
News of the alleged crimes continues a miserable period for Italian football, which has been rocked by a match-fixing scandal, with at least 50 people arrested since the middle of 2011 and scores more still under investigation, as well as a number of outbreaks of hooliganism.
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