21.04.2010
Italian Federation opens new Calciopoli investigation
The Italian Football Federation (FIGC) on Wednesday announced that it is opening a new match-fixing investigation.
The new inquest, to be led by FIGC prosecutor Stefano Palazzi, is related to the 2006 Calciopoli scandal that almost brought Italian football to its knees and follows a series of revelations in recent weeks.
Lawyers for Luciano Moggi, who is currently in the dock of a criminal court in Naples over his involvement in the 2006 scandal, have been drip-releasing tapped conversations between the former referees' selector and various club officials, dating back to 2005-06.
Many of those have been between the now-deceased former Inter Milan president Giacinto Facchetti and Paolo Bergamo, the former referees' selector.
Moggi, the former Juventus president, was himself previously convicted in a sporting court for match-fixing relating to conversations he had with officials over the designation of certain referees for particular matches.
Juventus were hit hard by Calciopoli as they were stripped of their last two Serie A titles in 2005 and 2006 and relegated to Serie B.
Inter, however, were the only one of Italy's big three clubs -- the other being AC Milan -- not to be punished.
During the original investigation, thousands of telephone conversations were tapped and their contents transcribed, and this was used as evidence against the clubs sanctioned, which also included Fiorentina, Lazio and Reggina.
Some conversations, considered irrelevant by the investigators, were not originally transcribed but Moggi's lawyers successfully applied to have them noted and used as evidence.
It is these new transcriptions that the current investigation will concentrate on although those so far leaked to the press by Moggi's lawyers have contained nothing damning.
Source: © 2010 AFP - Andreas Solaro
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