{"id":10227,"date":"2026-04-26T16:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T16:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/10227\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T16:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T16:56:08","slug":"italy-referee-chief-suspends-himself-over-sports-fraud-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/10227\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy referee chief suspends himself over sports fraud investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The man in charge of assigning Serie A and B referees, \u200bGianluca Rocchi, has suspended himself from the \u200crole with immediate effect while under investigation \u200bfor sports fraud by Milan\u2019s \u2060Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p>VAR supervisor Andrea Gervasoni has taken similar action for the same reasons, and \u200cthe investigation is looking into incidents during last season\u2019s Serie A campaign.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis \u200cchoice, painful, difficult but shared with \u200cmy \u2060family, is intended to allow \u2060the legal proceedings to run their course properly, from which I am sure I will come out \u200bunscathed and stronger \u200cthan before,\u201d Rocchi\u2019s statement to Italy\u2019s referees\u2019 association (AIA) said.<\/p>\n<p>ALSO READ | <a href=\"https:\/\/sportstar.thehindu.com\/football\/mohamed-salah-injury-update-liverpool-farewell-game-confirmation-health-bulletin-premier-league-transfer-news\/article70907891.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Injured Salah to miss rest of Liverpool season, says Egypt national team director<\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to Italian media reports, Rocchi is accused of interfering with VAR \u200cprotocols along with selecting referees preferable \u200bto Inter Milan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are learning everything from the media, so we are \u2060stunned by the declarations,\u201d Inter President Giuseppe Marotta told        Sky Sports before his side\u2019s \u200cgame at Torino on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do not have referees that we favour or are unfavourable towards; we are confident that we acted entirely fairly, which should reassure everyone. We are safe in the knowledge \u200cthat Inter are not involved in this situation \u200band will not be involved in the future,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>The news has sparked \u2060fears in Italy of another crisis, similar to \u2060the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal, which saw Juventus stripped of the 2004-05 Serie \u200cA title and relegated to Serie B, with AC Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio \u200band Reggina also involved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"publish-time\" id=\"end-of-article\">Published on Apr 26, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man in charge of assigning Serie A and B referees, \u200bGianluca Rocchi, has suspended himself from the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7513,7519,7521,7520,7518,5,7522,7523],"class_list":["post-10227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-gianluca-rocchi","tag-gianluca-rocchi-italy-referee","tag-gianluca-rocchi-italy-referee-scam","tag-gianluca-rocchi-italy-referee-scandal","tag-gianluca-rocchi-news","tag-italy","tag-italy-referee-fraud","tag-italy-referee-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}