Juventus Chairman Andrea Agnelli, along with the Italian first-division team’s entire board of directors, resigned late on Monday amid a probe into alleged false accounting and market manipulation related to the company’s last three years of financial filings.

"We are facing a delicate moment as a company and the unity has failed,” Agnelli said Monday in a letter to employees. "When the team is not cohesive it becomes vulnerable and that can be fatal.

"It is better to leave everyone together, giving the possibility to a new team to overturn that game."

The public prosecutor’s office in Turin, where Juventus is based, and Consob, Italy’s market regulator, filed a dispute into some of the club’s recent financial balance sheets. The review of so-called salary maneuvers led to a revision of estimates of accrual charges as of end of June 2020, June 2021 and June 2022, the team said in a statement.

The team added it had amended its balance sheets, to be approved by shareholders on Dec. 27.

Juventus deputy chairman Pavel Nedved and Chief Executive Officer Maurizio Arrivabene offered to resign, but the board of directors asked Arrivabene to stay in the job, according to the statement. The company also said it had appointed Maurizio Scanavino as General Manager. Scanavino is currently CEO and general manager of GEDI Gruppo Editoriale SpA, the media company owned by the Agnelli family.

The Agnelli family, which founded automaker Fiat SpA nearly 125 years ago, manages most of its properties through holding company Exor. It also controls Ferrari, CNH Industrial and media publisher The Economist Group, and is the largest single investor in Stellantis. The family has owned Juventus since 1923, and manages it through Exor, led by John Elkann.

Shares in the club have declined almost 20% since January, giving the company a market value of about €707 million ($731 million). In 2021, the team approved a capital increase of €400 million.

Since 2010, Juventus won nine consecutive Italian top league titles, under the leadership of Agnelli. Last year, Agnelli was one of the leading architects of the so-called European Super League, a project that crumbled just days after its launch as teams pulled out after drawing ire from fans, politicians and sport officials.

Juventus is currently ranked third behind Napoli and AC Milan in the Serie A. In Sepember, the club reported a €254 million loss, the largest in the league's history.

The club attributed the poor figures for the 2021-22 season partly to the effects of the pandemic and due to an early exit from the European Champions League. Some fans, who had paid for matches they were unable to attend the previous season due to COVID-19 were compensated, reducing revenue, the company said.

Juventus has scheduled a shareholders’ meeting for Jan. 18 to appoint a new board of directors. Agnelli, who has chaired Juventus since 2010, will not seek a reappointment, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.