The investigation into illegal betting has engulfed the Italian national team and it is continuing to expand, with Alessandro Florenzi the latest player put under the magnifying glass.
La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) recall that the investigation so far has led to the suspension of two players – Nicolò Fagioli and Sandro Tonali – and the Turin Prosecutor’s Office are not done there.
Florenzi is the latest player to be investigated for betting on illegal platforms and the news came like a bolt from the blue given that his name, unlike that of others, had never circulated before. The Milan full-back is charged with the same crime as Fagioli, Tonali and Zaniolo which is article 4 of law 401 of 1989.
The conditional statement is a must, because neither confirmations nor denials have been received from the Turin Prosecutor’s Office, even if indiscretions about possible news on the football front had filtered out in recent days.
There has been no comment from the defender himself, as well as from Milan, who made it known that they had learned the news from the agencies and were not aware of the player’s involvement. Florenzi played against Lecce on Saturday, coming on in the second half and also picking up a yellow card.
He was not called up by Luciano Spalletti for Italy’s two games (he hasn’t been in the Italian squad for a while) so he remained in Milan to train together with his other team-mates, while it is still too early to say how his name came to the attention of the investigators.
It could have emerged during the interrogations of one of the other three players involved or it could have come out during the examination of the electronic devices seized from Tonali and Zaniolo in Coverciano.
The investigations are still ongoing and the Turin Prosecutor’s Office is maintaining maximum confidentiality. The clandestine ring It all started last spring, when prosecutor Manuela Pedrotta, coordinator of the investigation, began to deal with a ring of betting on illegal platforms.
Betting is not a crime, it becomes one if the sites in question are not considered legal in Italy, i.e. they do not have the permit to operate issued by the Customs and Monopolies Agency (ADM). Not having to comply with constraints, these sites allow you to earn much more than the limits imposed in legal betting.
Investigators have discovered dozens and dozens of clandestine sites worth millions and millions of euros, outlawed platforms that can be accessed by invitation and which guarantee practically unlimited credit.
For the Prosecutor’s Office, the players themselves represent a marginal aspect of the investigation. They want to understand who manages the sites in question: the suspicion is that organised crime is behind it. For this reason, Florenzi could be spoen to in Turin in the next few days, as has already happened for the other three, to clarify his position and provide useful details for the investigations.
At the moment it seems as though Florenzi is just at risk of a fine, but it must be understood if he placed any bets on football and if he did then the same procedure as happened to Tonali and Fagioli will apply, who got 10 and 7-month bans respectively.
time for that jimenez kid to show us what he got
Here we go again.
“no comment from the defender himself, as well as from Milan, who made it known that they had learned the news from the agencies”
When did Milan say this? And in that case wouldn’t it be that they made a comment on it ? lol