Italian police said that Serie A side Parma Chair Giampietro Manenti and 21 others "have been arrested on charges including embezzlement and money-laundering," according to Isla Binnie of REUTERS. Manenti, whose club faces a bankruptcy hearing on Thursday, "is accused of investing illicit funds, as part of a probe that has led to dozens of raids across the country." A police source said that "the public accounts department of Italy's Treasury was among the sites raided." Prosecutor Michele Prestipino Giarrita said that "the case related to a group of suspected information fraudsters and money-launderers who had moved millions of euros from a Swiss bank using cloned credit cards." Prestipino said the suspicion is that the group "made available to Manenti a sum of around €4.5 million ($4.78M) through a system which you could call banal but was certainly simple" (REUTERS, 3/18). ESPN's Ben Gladwell reported Parma captain Alessandro Lucarelli said the situation at a club on the verge of bankruptcy is "disgusting" after Manenti was arrested. Lucarelli said, "What can I say? Every single day we're dealt another big blow and I hope all this ends sooner or later. I can't cope anymore." Parma Mayor Federico Pizzarotti "expressed his reaction to Manenti's arrest via his Twitter account." He tweeted, "I said it from the start: there's no room in Parma for dishonest people. No profiteer lays their hands on the Parma people, the city and our club #SaveParma" (ESPN, 3/18). The BBC wrote prosecutors said that Manenti "could have disguised the money involved in the failed scam as revenue from sponsorships or gadget purchases." It "was allegedly foiled before any transfers to Parma accounts took place" (BBC, 3/18).
