Thursday 13 September 2018 18:48, UK
Serie A club Chievo have been deducted three points and fined €200,000 (£180,000) by the Italian FA (FIGC) for false accounting.
The FIGC's sports tribunal found Chievo guilty of adding around €27m to the real transfer fees of young players from Italian lower-league club Cesena between 2015 and 2018.
Club president Luca Campedelli has been banned for three months with four advisors also suspended for six weeks.
The Verona club had been accused of using their player dealings with Cesena to create a false profit for both clubs and allow them to satisfy the conditions for registering in their respective divisions.
The FIGC said in a statement that the disciplinary tribunal accepted the referral of the prosecutor, sanctioning Chievo Verona with a three-point deduction in the table, to be taken in the current season, and a fine of €200,000.
It also "sanctioned the president of the club, Luca Campedelli, with a three-month ban, as well as a one-month 15-day ban for advisors Piero Campedelli, Giuseppe Campedelli, Michele Cordioli and Antonio Cordioli".
Chievo said later in a statement they were "amazed and disappointed by the outcome" and would be appealing.
"We firmly believe, now more than ever, that the club has always acted with fairness and transparency, and the investigations by the prosecutor were not carried out properly.
"We will therefore appeal, confident that the sporting justice will eventually recognise our reasoning."
Chievo finished 13th in Serie A last season and are bottom of the table this season with one point from three games.
