The sale of AC Milan could be based on a forgery

The Sydney Morning Herald has today ran with a story that will certainly bring AC Milan’s takeover to a large amount of scrutiny.

And rightly so. The key part of the Herald’s story lies below:

To prove their financial strength during the deal talks, the Chinese group provided documents on what appears to be Bank of Jiangsu stationery, purporting to show transaction details of a consortium member's corporate account, people with knowledge of the matter said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.

After reviewing the matter, Bank of Jiangsu found it hadn't issued any such document detailing the account's transactions, the lender said in an e-mailed response to Bloomberg queries.

This follows a report from Bloomberg.

To sum it up, when the Chinese group, that are now completing their purchase of the club, were in initial discussions, they flashed what now appears to be an illegitimate bank statement. This now means that their wealth and power is completely unknown to the public and possibly Berlusconi’s Fininvest.

The Chinese group, Sino-Europe did issue a response, of sorts:

The Chinese consortium, led by businessman Li Yonghong and known as Sino-Europe Sports Investment Management Changxing, "does not confirm it has ever sent such a document," it said in an e-mailed statement, declining to be more specific. "As we have already factually demonstrated, we stay committed on the closing of the deal."

All-in-all, this could be nothing. Sino-Europe have already paid a large deposit and may have fabricated some details about their wealth. We don’t know what this means, but the big questions remains:

Why do this?