Commenting on the “Penalty” operation, which led to the execution of precautionary measures for an alleged sports fraud linked to the world of youth football, the Reggio Calabria prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli clarified the contours of the investigation, underlining that no involvement of footballers emerged.
“We have ascertained – explained Borrelli – that the referee involved altered the results of some matches in the youth sectors and was planning to extend his interests to professional championships too, making profits through sports betting”.
The prosecutor also specified that contacts emerged with people residing in Tuscany, who would have provided the capital and managed the bets, but no link with structured criminal organizations was found.
The investigation, added Borrelli, started from reports of anomalies in betting, with suspicious concentrations of bets on some matches of the youth championships, “bets coming from Calabrian centers – he said – despite not involving local teams”.
Technical activities and investigative investigations then arose from those anomalies which made it possible to reconstruct the illicit mechanism and identify the network of people involved.