Prosecutors in Milan have requested {that a} sports activities fraud case towards Gianluca Rocchi, the person accountable for assigning referees in Italy’s high flight, be dismissed.
The previous worldwide referee suspended himself in April after being positioned below investigation for “complicity in sporting fraud” throughout the 2024-25 season.
Rocchi, the Nationwide Referees Fee’s referee designator for Serie A and Serie B, has all the time protested his innocence.
According to Italian news agency Ansa,, external prosecutors concluded after a two-year inquiry that there was no proof of match-fixing, saying they didn’t “establish a structured system aimed toward interfering with appointments”.
It was claimed that Rocchi was behind the choice of a referee for an Inter Milan sport as he was “appreciated by Inter”.
A video assistant referee determination to not intervene when an Inter participant elbowed an opponent in one other sport was additionally below scrutiny.
The simultaneous case towards Inter has been dropped as properly.
Rocchi was additionally accused of pressuring a VAR official to encourage a referee to examine on the pitchside monitor for a handball offence throughout Udinese’s 1-0 win over Parma in March final yr.
The referee and VAR official had already determined to not award a penalty however modified their minds, it’s claimed, resulting in Florian Thauvin scoring the one objective of the sport.
Prosecutors have now forwarded the case paperwork to the sports activities justice authorities and the Italian Olympic Committee’s Basic Prosecutor’s Workplace to evaluate whether or not any disciplinary breaches inside a sporting context could have occurred.
Sporting fraud is a felony offence in Italy and carries a most sentence of six years in jail.
