Football agent’s Malta company named in Conte’s hunt for €33 million

London court issues €33 million global freezing order on financier chased by Conte and Patrice Evra

Former Italy national coach Antonio Conte
Former Italy national coach Antonio Conte

Inter coach Antonio Conte is part of a group of plaintiffs chasing over €33 million in a London court, money of which passed through a football agent’s Maltese company.

The former Chelsea and Juve coach obtained a worldwide freezing order from a London court on financier Massimo Bochicchio and his company Kidman Asset Management.

The claimants are contending that a major fraud was perpetrated by Bochicchio on a €33.1 million settlement deal they were promised in June 2020, which sum has not been paid.

Conte produced a direct deposit transfer letter purporting to come from HSBC, whose authenticity the bank is doubting.

When the investors were looking to redeem their investments in 2019 and 2020, they were met with evasive and inconsistent responses, assurances of imminent payment and, in some cases, assertions payments had already been made but no payments were forthcoming.

The claimants believe the money was not invested as promised and that they were being fobbed off when they sought their money back.

The London court said Bochicchio has a flat in London and various shareholdings in English companies, as well as assets abroad. “There is no clear picture at the moment of what other assets it holds, but there must be a real prospect that it holds some assets that represent the proceeds of the sums invested through it,” the court said.

According to court documents, Inter FC itself made out three transfers of €305,000 to an HSBC account in the name of Kidman Asset Management over 2016 and 2017, which money was destined to football agent Federico Pastorello’s Maltese company Sovi International.

In Malta, Sovi is registered under the name of director Francesco Guarnieri, a lawyer who had been a director of Global Capital Financial Management in Malta until January 2020.

Questions sent by Italian journalists from L’Espresso as to why the Inter transfers to Sovi were made in the name of Kidman Asset Management, went unanswered.

Pastorello’s work in the past with Inter included the transfers of champion Romelu Lukaku, Samir Handanovic, Danilo D’Ambrosio, Antonio Candreva, Kwadwo Asamoah, Joao Mario, and Valentino Lazaro.

Another company seeking monies from Bochicchio is former Manchester United player Patrice Evra, though his Luxembourgish company Palesa SARL. Bochicchio was one of Palesa’s four directors, while Evra was part of Pastorello’s client group for his Luxembourg football club.

Another plaintiff is Luca Bascherini, owner of the London company Suprem Sports, for years one of Pastorello’s trusted collaborators for the transfer of football players.