The Milan Prosecutor’s Office carried out a search of Casa Milan on Tuesday, and it seems that there are some key words that they are looking for as part of the investigation.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below), the Milan Prosecutor’s Office urged the Financial Police to move quickly with their search decree, in order to avoid the disappearance of any clues or evidence.
From there the searches of offices and homes, with associated IT devices, begins. But what are the investigators looking for in the computers and cell phones available to the current CEO of Milan, Giorgio Furlani, and his predecessor, Ivan Gazidis, two of the four under investigation?
The magistrates have provided the Special Unit of the Financial Police’s Currency Police (II Group – Savings Protection Section) with a list of keywords to speed up computer research in the aforementioned devices.
Some are obvious – like Milan, RedBird, Elliott – while others need to be explained. There is of course the term ‘vendor loan’, which defines part of the AC Milan purchase operation used by RedBird, through a loan from the seller, i.e. Elliott. A loan which, as confirmed by RedBird, has a three-year maturity.
Some words (in English) are of a financial nature (intermediary, payment, pledge, investors, confidential letters, purchase contract…). Others, however, refer to companies involved, some more and some less, in Milan’s corporate structure in recent years.
There is ‘Project Redblack’, the Luxembourg company formed in 2017 by Elliott and Blue Skye to finance the loan to Yonghong Li and then, once the club was foreclosed, parent company of Rossoneri Sport Investment Luxembourg Sarl, which in turn holds the club’s shares.
Another is ‘Footballco Intermediate’, the name of the company controlled by the RedBird fund which led the purchase from Rossoneri Sport Investment Luxembourg Sarl in 2022. But, as per practice when there are investment funds involved, each change of ownership since 2017 to date it has led to the birth and involvement of multiple companies.
For example, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, there would be a discrepancy between the corporate structure provided to the AC Milan board and that communicated to the ‘Coaps commission’ (another key word) of the FIGC.
At the top, as reconstructed by the magistrates, is ‘Rc Fc Holding Genpar’, a company based in Delaware at the same address as ‘King George Investments’ and ‘Genio Investment’, majority shareholders of Project Redblack.
Curiously, the name of the two was chosen at the time by Furlani himself in homage to Weah (King George) and Savicevic (Il Genio). Here, all these companies are on the list provided to the Guardia di Finanza, together with ‘Zoro’ and ‘Vento’, two Luxembourg limited companies that appear as directors of both Rossoneri Sport and Project Redblack.
A complex system, therefore, of company upon company. However, two French football teams, Lille and Toulouse, also appear on the list.
The reason is simple: Lille, in another game of puzzles, are in the hands of a company indebted to Elliott for €170m. Toulouse, on the other hand, have been in the RedBird sphere since 2020, although rumours of a sale are increasing day by day in France.
The clarifications contained in the decree regarding the inspections of Furlani and Gazidis’ devices are also curious. In essence, the magistrates ask to make a digital copy of all the material of interest and a forensic copy if the PC or mobile phone is covered by codes and capture systems that cannot be found (in this case, in the presence of the suspects).
According to what is being reported by Repubblica (via Calciomercato.com), there are 41 key words that the PM’s men are using to examine all the material collected.
Among these, for example, there is the word ‘Kaiser’ which refers to Kaiser Permanente, the US private healthcare giant which had hypothesised an initial €200m investment in Milan only to then back out.
Another is ‘Investcorp’ like the Arab fund that had presented an offer of €1.1bn euros without loans, but rejected by Elliott who instead preferred the vendor loan with RedBird Capital.
Wow all of this is way too much poetic for me haha
Good news today at least Inter won’t win the Champions League!
I too feel like we had a great win last night!
something dirty
“Weah (King George) and Savicevic (Il Genio)” ♥️🖤