Shanghai (AFP) – The Chinese consortium that agreed to buy AC Milan in a multi-million dollar deal this summer has been hit with new forgery claims, local media said Friday.
In August, Silvio Berlusconi agreed to sell more than 99 percent of AC Milan to a little-known Chinese consortium named Sino-Europe Sports Investment Management Changxing.
The deal valued the club at 740 million euros (then $825.4 million) including debt.
But the Chinese group provided a forged bank statement to prove its financing abilities, China’s respected business magazine Caixin reported.
The consortium provided a statement issued by the Bank of Dongguan, a regional commercial lender based in the southern province of Guangdong, saying it would provide assistance to finance the deal.
But Bank of Dongguan denied they ever provided such a document to the Chinese group, Caixin cited the lender as saying.
The Chinese consortium includes businessman Yonghong Li, the Haixia Capital group, and other private and public Chinese companies.
Sino-Europe Sports Investment Management Changxing Co has already paid 100m euros to Fininvest, the holding company of AC Milan owner and president Berlusconi, who is expected to sign off on the 740m euro deal by the end of the year.
The news comes just two days after Bloomberg News alleged that other false documents were used in the initial negotiations of the deal.
The Bloomberg report claimed that Sino-Europe Sports provided documents on “what appears to be Bank of Jiangsu Co. stationery, purporting to show transaction details of a consortium member’s corporate account.”
It added that “after reviewing the matter, Bank of Jiangsu found it hadn’t issued any such document detailing the account’s transactions.”
Fininvest earlier told AFP it could not confirm it had received the documents in the Bloomberg report, adding: “we do not intend to comment on the affair.”
Bloomberg’s claims, reported widely in the Italian media, have cast a shadow over a deal that could see Milan, one of the world’s legendary football clubs, following in the footsteps of city rivals Inter Milan in being sold to Chinese investors.
Inter, Italy’s last Champions League winners, in 2010, are now owned by the Chinese group Suning, who bought a majority stake in the club several months ago from Indonesian Erick Thohir.
AC Milan already pulled out of one deal with Chinese investors last year, and recently the new bid was hit by doubts.
