Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis has been formally sent to trial by the Rome preliminary hearings judge (GUP) on charges of false accounting linked to the club’s financial statements for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 seasons. Also sent to trial are his long-time associate Andrea Chiavelli and the club itself.
The case centres on alleged inflated capital gains (plusvalenze) connected to two major transfers: the 2019 signing of Kostas Manolas from Roma, and the 2020 deal that brought Victor Osimhen to Naples from Lille, according to the latest reports via Tuttosport.
In the Manolas operation, Napoli included midfielder Amadou Diawara as part of the exchange. A year later, the Osimhen transfer involved goalkeeper Orestis Karnezis and three Primavera players, Manzi, Palmieri and Liguori, whose valuations, according to prosecutors, were artificially inflated to improve Napoli’s financial position.
The trial is scheduled to begin on 2 December 2026.
Napoli and De Laurentiis deny any wrongdoing.
In a statement, the club said: “Napoli expresses its astonishment and dismay at the decision to refer the case to trial taken by the Preliminary Investigating Magistrate in Rome. All the technical reports, which are of the highest standard, have unequivocally proven the correctness of the club’s actions, both with regard to the recording of transactions in the financial statements and with regard to player transfers. The prosecution itself correctly acknowledged, during its closing arguments, that Napoli did not derive any advantage from the disputed transactions.
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“The club is calm and confident about the outcome of the legal proceedings, which will begin in over a year’s time – with the first hearing set for 2 December 2026 – where the truth about the matter will certainly be re-established.”
De Laurentiis’ legal representatives Gaetano Scalise, Fabio Fulgeri and Lorenzo Contrada told Italian newspaper La Repubblica: “We are absolutely astonished by the judge’s decision. It is further proof of how the preliminary hearing is becoming a pointless process until we have a truly third-party judge. All the conditions were in place to acquit the defendants because the public prosecutor’s office, or rather the Guardia di Finanza, also made mistakes in applying accounting principles, and even the public prosecutors stated that Napoli did not obtain any advantage from these operations.”
They added that Italy’s preliminary hearing system “has become an unnecessary step” and argued that more transparent reasoning is needed for decisions to send cases to trial.
In 2023, fellow Serie A club Juventus accepted a fine of €718,000 as part of a plea-bargain struck with the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) over financial malpractice.