Rosario D’Onofrio, former chief prosecutor of the Italian Association of Arbitrators (AIA), was sentenced this Thursday by the Court of Milan (north) to a sentence of 5 years and 8 months in prison for being involved in an international drug trafficking plot between Spain and Italy.
In the first moment, The Milan Prosecutor’s Office requested almost 8 years in prison, but his collaboration was key to the investigation. which is why mitigating circumstances were applied and the sentence was reduced.
D’Onofrio, a former Italian army officer known as ‘Rambo’, He was arrested in November 2022 as part of an investigation carried out by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA) and the Milan Financial Guard, in which law enforcement agencies from Spain and the Netherlands also participated.
The detainees had entered the Italian region of Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, more than six tons of marijuana and hashish between 2019 and 2021, Italian law enforcement agencies reported at the time.
The drug trafficking route was between Italy and Spain.
During the police operation, the authorities seized almost half a ton of drugs and a thousand electronic cigarette refills. based on cannabinoids, a chemical substance that causes effects similar to those produced by the Cannabis plant.
What did the former arbitrators prosecutor do with drug trafficking?
D’Onofrio was part of the gang organized as a courier – for drugs and money to whiten it later – and as a logistics organizer to find the best places to make deliveries.
The convicted man took advantage of his ex-military uniform to go unnoticed and deliver in 2020, even during confinement.
The conflict put Alfredo Trentalange, president of the AIA, in the spotlight in 2022 at that time, whom the Prosecutor’s Office of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) accused of not having been interested in “finding out the true professional and moral intentions of Rosario D’Onofrio.”
The situation led to the resignation of Trentalage, who was sentenced by the FIGC Court in March 2023 to 3 months of disqualification, although he was acquitted shortly after after his appeal, in April 2023.
D’Onofrio was part of the AIA since 2013, appointed by Trentalange as the person responsible for investigating possible irregularities by referees.
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