New Juventus board faces legal fight in first week

MILAN : A new board at Italian soccer club Juventus will be appointed this week and plunged straight into its accounting scandal, with a hearing on Friday before sporting authorities on its transfer dealings.

Gianluca Ferrero, an accountant, will succeed Andrea Agnelli after the high profile chairman and fellow board members resigned at the end of November as Turin prosecutors and Italy's market watchdog examined the club's finances.

Ferrero is the son of Cesare Ferrero, long-time accountant to late Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli. He is close to Agnelli's grandson John Elkann, now the senior business figure in the family that has owned Juventus for a century.

Exor, the Agnelli family holding company which controls Juventus, has proposed Maurizio Scanavino, the head of its GEDI media group as the new Juventus CEO. The appointments are set to be confirmed at a shareholder meeting in Turin on Wednesday.

Accountants and lawyers will form the core of the new slimmed-down, five-member board proposed by Exor, with a specific aim of shielding the most successful club in Italian soccer history from its legal troubles.

Prosecutors in Turin have requested Agnelli, 11 other people and the club itself stand trial over allegations of false accounting. Juventus has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

SPORTING SANCTIONS?

While the criminal case will likely take years to play out, Juventus will this week face the possible cancellation of a ruling by a soccer court that had previously cleared it, other clubs and their executives in a case involving capital gains on transfer dealings.

A new hearing of soccer's federal appeals court on the case is scheduled for Friday.

Enrico Lubrano, a sport law professor at LUISS university in Rome told Reuters that Juventus