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#INSERT type:image caption:Massimo De Santis was given a one-year suspended sentence. END# Former Italian referee Massimo De Santis hit out at the Italian justice system after the 2006 Calciopoli match-fixing scandal trial was closed, leaving him as the only person charged. On Monday, the high court ruled that the case had expired after a nine-year investigation. Charges against former Juventus directors Luciano Moggi and Antonio Giraudi -- both of whom were accused of manipulating the appointment of referees for Serie A matches -- were dropped. De Santis, who was charged with criminal conspiracy and given a one-year suspended sentence, refused to accept the expiry of the case because doing so would have constituted an admission of guilt. "It's terrible," he told La Gazzetta dello Sport. "The high court sentence is indecent. "I would have expected a more autonomous decision from magistrates of their standing, free from any outside influence, but they didn't have the courage. "It's bitterly disappointing. It only confirms that our justice system is the worst in the world. For nine years, they've been taking the mickey out of an entire country and millions of people just for a bit of publicity." De Santis maintains he did nothing wrong by talking to Moggi and Giraudo in 2005 and 2006, when some of his telephone conversations with them were recorded and used as evidence of corruption. "Do you really think I was the only referee talking with club officials or heads of institutions?" he asked. "It was common. All we talked about was things you'd hear in any bar. Why should I pay for things people above me have got wrong? "I'll give you one example. Before Reggina-Cagliari, the person who appoints referees called [Reggina president Lillo] Foti and told him: 'Don't worry, I'm sending you Massimo.' He then did the same with [Cagliari president Massimo] Cellino. "The real scandal is not the phone calls that have been recorded but those that we don't know about because they were deliberately never used as evidence, and that's a disgrace." Meanwhile, former Juventus executive Luciano Moggi has said he will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in an attempt to overturn his lifetime ban from football. Moggi, along with another former Juventus executive Antonio Giraudo, was accused of creating a network of contacts with football officials to influence refereeing assignments and arrange for key players in other teams to be booked ahead of matches with the Turin club. The 77-year-old's ban remains despite the closure of the case, and the Associated Press reported him as saying: "My battle continues. "I'm turning to the European Court of Human Rights to cancel also the sporting ban and return to the world of football. "Two referees who were accused of sporting fraud were cleared. I couldn't have committed sporting fraud and criminal association on my own. I have always shown my face because I don't fear anyone." Juventus were stripped of the 2005 and 2006 Serie A titles for their role in the scandal, and relegated to Serie B. Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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