2006 World Cup winner Iaquinta released from Mafia links accusations

2006 World Cup winner Vincenzo Iaquinta was not in the mafia unlike his father, according to the explanation, released Thursday of a sentence on the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta mafia’s infiltration of the northern Italian economy in the so-called Aemilia (Latin for Emilia) trial.

Former Italy and Juventus striker Iaquinta, who got two years for gun charges, was “extraneous to mafia association, and the very close personal relationship with his father raise the doubt that he did not act to pursue (mafia) ends but only, and solely, to help his father”, the published explanation read.

The father, on the other hand, was a “strategic figure inside the criminal organisation,” it said.

Both men faced charges of illegal detention of weapons and ammunition and of having failed to report that the pistols had been moved.

Giuseppe Iaquinta was one of 117 arrested in the Aemilia probe, most of whom got long sentences.

Via Ansa