Milan Sale Investigation: Price Discrepancies and Potential Irregularities

There is also the appropriateness of the Milan sale price among the topics at the center of the Milanese investigation, which raises doubts about the actual transfer of the Rossoneri team from the Elliott fund to RedBird. This is what has been learned from Milanese judicial sources. The club was formally purchased for about 1.2 billion euros, a figure that has long been considered too high in certain circles. The investigations aim to shed light also on the reason for the alleged simulated sale. The Financial Police and the prosecutors are already working on the seized documents yesterday to ascertain the reasons behind the operation. There are "significant discrepancies" between what was communicated by RedBird, the fund of Gerry Cardinale who bought Milan in August 2022, to the SEC, the US market surveillance commission, and what was reported, instead, "to the board of directors" of the club "regarding the origin of the funds used to finalize the purchase of the shares" of the Rossoneri company. This is one of the themes, as emerges from the search decree executed yesterday by the Special Currency Police Unit of the Financial Police, on which the investigations of the Milan Prosecutor's Office, which include among the suspects the CEO Giorgio Furlani and his predecessor Ivan Gazidis, are focusing. In particular, according to the documents, to the Milan board of directors, on June 11, 2022, that is before the closing, it was communicated that 400 million euros, i.e., a part of the over 1 billion for the purchase, would have been paid by the fund "Rb Fund Iv Fc Aiv Cv" which does not appear, instead, in the documents sent by RedBird to the SEC. From the "form adv" updated to March 31, 2023 filed with the SEC, in fact, the prosecutors investigating with the hypothesis that Elliott still controls Milan, it appears that that fund indicated for the purchase to the Rossoneri board "is not an investment fund managed by RedBird". Hence the suspicion, according to the accusation, that "the majority of the capital used for the sale" is "coming from a corporate vehicle not referable to RedBird". There are more than 40 key words to be used for the "targeted search of documents of investigative interest" in the mobile devices, computer and telematic supports, seized yesterday to the CEO of Milan Giorgio Furlani and his predecessor Ivan Grazidis, two of the four suspects in the investigation of the Milan Prosecutor's Office on the transfer, considered dubious, of the Rossoneri team from the Elliott fund to RedBird occurred in the summer of 2022. The words indicated in the act will be the guide for the search for elements useful to the investigations starting from December 2021: it ranges from redline to prince, from vendor notes and confidentiality letter to lille and toulouse. And then, in addition to the names of the funds and companies involved in the sale, there are terms like kaiser, pledge, stock, zoro, wind, genius, covisoc, and investorcorp. Investigators and investigators in this way seek confirmations to their hypothesis, also considering it "necessary - it reads in the act - to deepen the different stages of the negotiations currently underway in view of the anticipated next sale of part of the shares of Ac Milan spa to interested investors".