AC Milan claim spot in Coppa Italia semis
Milan (Italy): Patrick Cutrone's overtime goal gave AC Milan a 1-0 victory over Inter Milan in the quarterfinals of the Coppa Italia.
It was the ninth goal of the season for the 19-year-old Cutrone, the club's leading scorer, while Suso Fernandez Saez picked up his eight assist of the campaign here on Wednesday, reports Efe.
The derby win in front of 50,000 at the San Siro was a much-needed boost for AC Milan, who sit 11th in the Serie A table, 16 points behind third-place Inter.
Milan coach Gennaro Gattuso said beforehand that his side were treating the match like a World Cup final.
The Rossoneri generated the first scoring a chance, a Giacomo Bonaventura header in the 18th minute that Inter goalkeeper Samir Handanovic stopped.
Inter thought they had taken the lead in the 24th minute when Milan keeper Antonio Donnarumma - playing in lieu of injured brother Gianluigi - mishandled a shot by Ivan Perisic and the ball landed in the net.
But after consulting the video replay, the referee disallowed the goal for an offside infraction.
The sides traded chances in the second half. Joao Mario kicked the ball straight at Donnarumma after taking a perfect cross from Mauro Icardi, while Milan's Giacomo Bonaventura fired over the cross-fire after a poor clearance by Handanovic.
Milan racheted up the pressure in the final minutes of regulation and carried that intensity over into extra time.
In the 105th minute Suso beat defender Yuto Nagatomo and delivered a perfect ball to Cutrone in the area.
AC Milan will face Lazio, the winners on Tuesday over Fiorentina, in a two-leg semifinal.
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Kerala: ED files money laundering case in Sabarimala gold loss case
Thiruvananthapuram/New Delhi (PTI): The Enforcement Directorate on Friday filed a money laundering case in the Sabarimala gold loss case in Kerala, official sources said.
The federal probe agency's Kochi zonal office has registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), an ED equivalent of a police FIR, under various sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), they said.
The politically sensitive case is already being investigated by a state special investigation team (SIT) under the supervision of the Kerala High Court.
In December, the high court had allowed the ED to undertake an independent investigation into the case after it dismissed objections raised by the SIT against sharing the case information with the central agency.
The SIT is probing two cases related to the gold loss incident and has arrested 11 people so far. The latest to be arrested by the SIT was Kandararu Rajeevaru, the chief priest of the Lord Ayyappa temple.
The other prominent persons arrested in the case by the SIT are Bengaluru-based businessman and prime accused Unnikrishnan Potty and former Travancore Devaswom Board president A Padmakumar.
The ED is expected to soon look for more evidence, question the accused, and it may also go on to attach certain assets of those involved if it finds that they generated "proceeds of crime", according to the officials.
The probe is related to a series of irregularities, including official misconduct, administrative lapses and a criminal conspiracy to misappropriate the gold from the various artefacts of the Lord Ayyappa shrine.
The investigation by the SIT, and now by the ED, is related to the loss of gold from the gold-cladded copper plates of the Dwarapalaka (guardian deity) idols and the door frames of the Sreekovil (sanctum sanctorum) of the temple.
The SIT has informed the High Court that its probe found "a series of serious official misconduct and administrative lapses on the part of the Devaswom officials right from the initial correspondence till the handing over of the door frame plates, connected plates, Dwarapalaka plates and pillar plates to Unnikrishnan Potty without proper authorisation".
It further said in its statement that Govardhan, Pankaj Bhandari, the CEO of Chennai-based Smart Creations, which carried out the electroplating of the artefacts from the temple, Potty and the other accused hatched a criminal conspiracy with malicious intention to misappropriate the gold cladded on the copper plates in and around the shrine.
"It is found during the investigation that all these criminal activities were part of a large conspiracy and an organised crime committed by the accused persons.
"They had a larger plan to dismantle other gold-clad items on the Sabarimala Sreekovil and to extract the gold from them for misappropriation," it said.
