Osimhen case: Lille email and De Laurentiis texts unsettle Napoli | OneFootball

The purchase of Victor Osimhen from Lille to Napoli, completed in the summer of 2020, is once again at the center of judicial attention. According to reports from La Repubblica, the Rome Prosecutor's Office has requested that Aurelio De Laurentiis, president of Napoli, and CEO Andrea Chiavelli be brought to trial on charges of false accounting.

Osimhen Case, Lille's Email and De Laurentiis' Texts to Giuntoli Shake Napoli

The investigation revolves around an allegedly artificial valuation of the transaction: 50 million euros in cash and another 20 million in technical counterparts, considered by investigators to be overestimated to generate fictitious capital gains.

Repubblica's Reconstruction: The "Facade Value" and Lille's Email

In the material acquired by the Guardia di Finanza, a document deemed crucial by the Prosecutor emerges: an internal email from Lille, referring to a "facade value."

In the communication, addressed to Napoli's executives, it reads:

"This allows you to pay for Osimhen a lower price than any other club, but with a nominal value that is necessary to close."

For the prosecutors, this sentence would be the "smoking gun": the proof that the operation was constructed to artificially inflate the overall value of the transfer.

The Exchange of Messages Between De Laurentiis and Giuntoli

Among the investigation documents is also an SMS from De Laurentiis to Cristiano Giuntoli, then Napoli's sporting director:

"If in the end it's 70 minus 20, that's fine with me."

A phrase that, in the context of the negotiation, would show awareness of a compensation mechanism between cash and technical counterparts, functional to reaching the 70 million figure requested by the French club.

The Role of Giuntoli and Pompilio: Internal Chats and Youth Evaluations

From the files analyzed by investigators, it appears that the negotiation for the three youth players — Manzi, Palmieri, and Liguori — was directly managed by Giuntoli and Pompilio, the sporting director's collaborator.

The Finance writes that the operations were

"externally directed by the same executives, as evidenced by the WhatsApp chat between Pompilio and Giuntoli on July 20."

In one of the exchanges, Pompilio expresses frustration with the rush to close:

"Cri, trust me. You can't realize what he asked you. Let me work."

A dialogue that, according to investigators, would demonstrate the search for contractual values to insert in official documents, not always based on real market parameters.

Lille's Internal Email: "It is my duty to warn you"

To reinforce the Prosecutor's doubts, there is also an internal communication between two Lille executives, Julien Mordacq and Marc Ingla:

"It is my duty to warn you again about the risks associated with this deal. Any element deemed 'strange' could generate questions about the entire operations and require real justifications."

A passage that, according to investigators, confirms the awareness of legal risks already during the negotiation phase.

The Position of the FIGC Prosecutor's Office

The investigation documents, also transmitted to the FIGC Federal Prosecutor's Office in April, have not, however, led to the reopening of the case in the sports domain. Prosecutor Giuseppe Chinè deemed the elements insufficient to reopen the proceedings, unlike what happened with Juventus in the case of capital gains.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.