AC Milan face Slavia Praha in the second leg of their Europa League last 16 tie hoping to make the final eight, uet the central theme of the last 48 hours has been far from matters on the pitch.
As Corriere della Sera (via MilanNews) reports this morning, the investigation carried out – with the search at Casa Milan and acquisition of cell phone and PC data – is something that has fans a bit restless even on a day when the game should be the main focus.
The paper tries to shed further light on the reasons that pushed the Guardia di Finanza to trigger an investigation and above all search the headquarters of the Rossoneri club.
Unlike what was reported yesterday by various parties, it is incorrect to think that the sale price is at the centre of the investigations, i.e. the €1.2bn that RedBird Capital agreed when they bought the club from Elliott Management.
Rather, everything revolves around the ‘proposed next sale of part of the shares to interested Arab investors’. This would be the reason why doubts arose about the real change of ownership from Elliott to RedBird.
Specifically, CorSera underlines how in note number 14305/24 filed by the Guardia di Finanza Currency Police Unit on 1 February 2024 , the search in via Aldo Rossi would be the ‘result of investigative activity as a consequence of the succession of news that RedBird was about to sell part of Milan to investors from the Arab world, with whom, moreover, the first discussions would have already taken place on 19 December 2023’.
Specifically, the ‘AC Milan Investor Presentation’ document ended up in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office, in which the company presents itself to possible investors in the Arab world, in which it appears that the vendor loan of €560m to date is a guarantee of the fact that Elliott will maintain still the owner.
It must be said that yesterday RedBird came out with a statement, which followed that of the Elliott fund a few hours earlier, in which they confirmed that they are the sole owners of Milan.
“RedBird Fund IV and its subscribers own 99.93% of AC Milan; the remaining 0.07 is in hand to individual Italian shareholders who are long-time supporters of the Club. The idea that RedBird does not own and control AC Milan is absolutely false and is contradicted by all evidence and facts.
“When we took control of the Club after the closing, Elliott provided a loan to RedBird with a three-year maturity and no voting rights. Our goal is to bring Milan back to the top leaders of Serie A and European football – everything else takes time away from achieving this goal.
“There are no ongoing discussions with any investor who could exercise control over the Club. RedBird is the controlling owner of AC Milan and will remain so.”
End of story. 🙂
Not only that, but for a transaction that DIDN’T EVEN HAPPEN YET. These people should be focusing on oligarch tax dodgers and mafia money laundering, not prospectuses distributed to potential investors in a football club.
They are the mafia…
Very interesting development. I think that Sala and co are realizing that San Siro their Cash Cow is about to stop producing milk therefore they want to do everything they can to prevent that from being channeled in the right direction.
I mean I heard the argument that city of Milan is too small to have two big stadiums. If that is true then what about Manchester, Madrid, Glasgow… this list can go on and on.
Everyone wins with Inter and Milan having respective venues except the mob. Honestly, they tried and came up with a top project which proved to be a waste of time. Instead, they chose to do studies now to somehow provide an alternative solution to a project that is now picking up dust.
They can say all they want but action speaks louder than words, and it’s not show time.
Forza Milan
There could be some truth to your claim @Milanezi that with Arab money it will accelerate the move away from San Siro. Could politics be at play here to obstruct the San Donato plans…maybe and hence the timing and reason of this investigation is a bit suspect
I just read that Oaktree has TWO board members in Inter (twice as many as Elliot has in Milan). So… Who are the real owners of Inter then? Why aren’t they being investigated too?
Whatever the outcome this is the issue with all of the dodgy money in football which is largely driven chasing all of the dodgy transfers.
If clubs didn’t waste so much money they wouldn’t need so much money.
Milan are now onto Adli, a player who wasn’t able to fit into the side last season and who is playing out of position, because we sold Cristante, Locatelli, and Tonali, and now we are stuck with the worst of all of those options just because we couldn’t stick.
Millions wasted.
In every single position.
Multiple times.
Each season.
Regardless.
Just to feed the endless hunger of the transfer market.
A year after we signed 10 or so players (I’ve honestly lost count) we’re again talking about a reconstruction.
Endless reconstruction.
Like some $1b IT project that never ends.
And still the crowd calls out for more.
And clubs just continue to become caught up a never ending debt spiral and desperate need to raise funds no matter what the source.
And still the crowd calls out for more.
I think you replied to the wrong article.
Strangely, I have a feeling he didn’t lol 😅
It’s copy and paste at this point. Possible dementia case.
He thinks we should have kept Tonali. We would have been screwed if we did.
I think mls has a bunch of rules preventing clubs from spending loads of money. That might be more your speed
You have no idea what you’re even talking about. Your talk of disruption, yet this teams is miles better than it was last season.
Also Cristante and Locatelli aren’t even close to good enough. And Tonali? Oh wow. We dodged a major bullet there… you know he’s sitting out on a ban because of a gambling addiction? You know how done over we would have been if we kept him?
Management made substantial improvements especially on our right side. From Messias and Saelesmaekers to Pulisic… not even close, bud.
This is just so odd. Head srcatcher
I think it shows, given the lack of clarity of this whole investigation, if its regarding the sale amount of the club between Elliot and Redbird or if its the sale price and future sale of the club to Arabs, that this investigation at the moment has NOTHING on the club, and it seems the authorities or whoever started this investigation is throwing whatever they have at the wall to see whatever sticks. I am not worried at the moment
Yonghong Li made an anonymous phone call…
Since when were loans illegal in Italy? Now that write that I’m remembering what ursury is…
From personal experience I know Italy is a backwards place but I didn’t think they were stuck that far in the past.