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The original was posted on /r/soccer by /u/OleoleCholoSimeone on 2025-02-27 18:22:16+00:00.
Original Title: Italian TV show Record has examined Inter’s finances under Suning and found several worrying discrepancies. False sponsors with direct connections to Suning, debts that should have lead to liquidation under normal circumstances and pressure to not report discrepancies
*Report is an investigative journalism show that focuses on financial, environmental and organised crime
*In 2020 Inter had total debts of €871M but only revenues of €430M. Report interviewed experts in financial penal law that said such a situation would normally lead to liquidation but the club was still allowed to keep business going as usual
*They question why FIGC or Uefa didn’t intervene when Inter showed signs of severe financial difficulties for years, including delayed salary payments to players
*FIGC president Gabriele Gravina was confronted with this information and responded that it can be difficult to separate the debts of an owner from the debts of a club. He claims that Inter have been audited by both FIGC & Uefa and that they fulfilled the requirements to play in Serie A
*A former employee of Covisoc(the agency that is responsible for monitoring club finances in Italy) doesn’t agree and says that there has been outside pressure put on employees to not report certain discrepancies that they found in Inter’s finances
*A few years ago, an independent analyst in London noticed discrepancies in Inter’s books. He claimed that the clubs’ sponsors were companies with connections to Suning and not independent actors. They paid big amounts of money upfront which doesn’t follow normal rules around sponsorships
*When he went public with these accusations, Inter suspiciously dumped all the sponsors. This directly lead to Steven Zhang having to take out a €360M loan from Oaktree in order to keep the club afloat. When Zhang couldn’t repay the loan by May 2024 Oaktree took control of the club as collateral
*Under Suning’s ownership the club was run through companies in Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands. This made their economy very difficult to track aroused questions about who actually owned Inter
*So far there has been no indication that an investigation into Inter’s finances will commence or that they will face any consequences as a result of Report’s information. Guiseppe Chiné, chief prosecutor of the Italian FA, contacted Report trying to get the identity of the anonymous former Covisoc employee who spoke about being pressured to not report irregularities. Chiné claims that he wants the name in order to then decide how to proceed with this matter
Edit: The show is called Report not Record*.