Napoli’s 2020 signing of Super Eagles striker Victor Osimhen has been placed under renewed scrutiny after a Rome judge referred an alleged false-accounting case involving the club to trial.
Magistrates have ruled that Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis and chief executive Andrea Chiavelli must stand trial over the club’s financial reporting in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 accounting years.
The investigation has focused heavily on the club-record deal that brought Osimhen from Lille in 2020, as well as the 2019 signing of defender Kostas Manolas from Roma.
Osimhen, who spent last season on loan in Turkey, left Napoli for Galatasaray in July for €75m. Manolas was sold to Olympiacos in January 2022.
The club has strongly denied any wrongdoing, calling the decision “astonishing and dismaying”. In a statement, Napoli said independent technical reports had “unequivocally proven the correctness” of its financial actions and insisted that prosecutors themselves acknowledged the club did not benefit from the transactions under review.
Napoli added that it remained “calm and confident” ahead of proceedings, with the first hearing set for 2 December 2026.
De Laurentiis’ lawyers Gaetano Scalise, Fabio Fulgeri and Lorenzo Contrada also expressed shock at the referral, telling La Repubblica that the decision showed how “the preliminary hearing is becoming a pointless process”.
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They argued that investigators made errors in the application of accounting principles.
The case comes two years after fellow Serie A side Juventus accepted a €718,000 fine in a plea agreement with the Italian Football Federation over financial malpractice.
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Napoli, De Laurentiis and Chiavelli will now face trial next year, with the Osimhen deal forming the central element of the allegations.
