The case against Milan

From a technical and tactical perspective, Milan's right to contest tonight's Champions League final against Liverpool cannot be questioned, after the team's demolition of Manchester United in the semi-final.

But the club is lucky to have been admitted to the competition at all this year after its involvement in the match-fixing scandal last year. Uefa, European football's governing body, did not want to admit Milan, reluctantly agreeing to do so when it realised that its statutes were not clear enough to stand up to a legal challenge had they kicked out Silvio Berlusconi's club. Uefa amended its statutes in January to close the loophole.

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The media focus on Luciano Moggi, the former director-general of Juventus, deflected attention from the behaviour of the other clubs, including Milan, who were charged last July by the Italian Football Federation. Milan's arrival in the final has opened fresh scrutiny of what happened last summer, with Internazionale's Patrick Vieira, among others, questioning Milan's right to be involved.

Leonardo Meani, a restaurateur from Lodi, near Milan, was the club official responsible for looking after referees and their assistants on match day. Meani had long known what Moggi was up to.

In one phone call with referee Pierluigi Collina, Meani said: "I was talking to Carletto the other day and he told me that [at Juventus] Moggi used to tell him on Thursday who the ref would be on Sunday." In theory, that was impossible. The ostensibly random draw of match referees took place on Friday mornings. "Carletto" is Carlo Ancelotti, Juventus coach from 1999 to 2001 and now Milan coach.

The first part of Meani's solution to Moggi's control of referees, the federation alleged, was to create a network of linesman, including Claudio Puglisi and Fabrizio Babini, who could be considered "on side" as far as the Milan cause was concerned.

The second part was to have these linesmen assigned to Milan matches by lobbying Gennaro Mazzei, the federation official responsible for assigning linesmen. The federation's investigators claimed that Milan's managing director, Adriano Galliani, condoned Meani's actions. The federation prosecutor, Stefano Palazzi, called for Milan to be kicked out of Serie A. Instead, the federation tribunal gave Milan a 44-point penalty for the 2005-06 season - ruling them out of European football this season - and a 15-point handicap for 2006-07. This was reduced on appeal to 30 points for 2005-06, pushing Milan back up to third, and a Champions League qualifying place, and eight points for this season.

Meani was banned from football for two years and six months. Galliani was banned for nine months, later reduced to five. Mazzei was banned for six months, while Puglisi and Babini were each banned for three months.

Berlusconi and Galliani have protested the club's innocence throughout. They claimed that Meani was not a club official at all, but a peripheral figure with no authority, acting autonomously. At the hearings, Milan's lawyers produced phone bills to show that Meani paid for all his own calls. Milan's only hope of overturning the penalties - outside the civil courts - lay with the arbitration service of the Italian Olympic Committee (Coni). The case was heard on 27 October by a panel of five highly respected lawyers. They found the federation had been correct in its interpretation of the sporting code and upheld the penalties.

"It is clear," they wrote, "that the behaviour of Mr Leonardo Meani, referees' official for AC Milan, was gravely at odds with the obligations of honesty and probity in having spoken directly with the person involved in choosing the match officials, putting him under pressure regarding the future selection of officials, and making implicit references to the grievances of the club's senior management." Meani, they said, "indicated the name of a linesman who would be 'appreciated' and obtained that linesman in the next match". The Coni panel found that Milan had a "direct responsibility" for his actions.

It was clear, they said, that the behaviour of Galliani was "at odds with the obligations of honesty and probity, in having tolerated and implicitly approved the actions of Mr Meani".

The Fifa president Sepp Blatter last week applauded Milan and Juventus for having taken their punishments on the chin instead of going to the courts. But the matter could end up in the courts anyway. Meani is one of around 40 people under investigation by Naples magistrates for sporting fraud, a crime which carries a maximum one-year prison sentence. Milan may rescue the footballing reputation of Serie A this evening, but Calciopoli (the scandal) and Milan's role in it are far from over.