Soccer: Ex-Juve director to appeal to human rights court
(ANSA) – Rome, October 23 – Disgraced former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi is planning to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against his life ban from Italian sport, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Moggi, 76, was at the centre of the 2006 Calciopoli match-fixing scandal concerning moves to have compliant referees officiate some teams games.
Many Italian teams were implicated in the scandal, but champions Juventus were worst hit. The Turin giants were stripped of two Serie A titles and demoted to the second tier, where they stayed a season before winning promotion back to the top flight. Moggi was banned from sport for five years and, when the suspension ran out, the Italian Soccer Federation (FIGC) extended it to the rest of his life.
That ruling was upheld by the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI), Italian sport’s governing body, and by the Lazio regional administrative court.
“Moggi is not just appealing against the severity of the punishment inflicted, in violation of the principle of proportionality to the offence the person is charged with, but also against the fact that these sanctions are the fruit of decisions by the Italian sporting and judicial authorities not to protect the rights… recognised by the (European) Convention (on Human Rights),” said a statement by Moggi’s lawyer, Federico Tedeschini.
Moggi is appealing against prison sentence of five years, four months in relation to Calciopoli.