The man whose activities have provoked the scandal, Luciano Moggi, 68, has long been one of the most powerful and controversial figures in the Italian game. The former deputy station master from Tuscany has been the subject of awed gossip for years. When Maradona used a prosthetic penis to avoid giving a urine test after matches when he played for Naples, Moggi, then manager of the club, was said by the club's owner to have supplied it to him.

Fixing referees was his preferred way of getting results: on several occasions he was found dining with referees before games, but it was always "a chance meeting". As manager of Torino he allegedly provided referees with female escorts before Uefa cup matches.

But now three separate investigations involving wire taps by prosecutors have lifted the lid on the extraordinary and squalid world of Italian football today, where, in the interests of the continuing supremacy of Juventus, Moggi contrived to keep every aspect of the game under his control.

Long gone are the days when, to obtain a desired result, players were paid to throw a game. Moggi's methods are infinitely more subtle.

Prosecutors in Naples kept Moggi's phones bugged for an entire year, and leaked some of the transcripts to the weekly magazine L'Espresso this week. As a result of what they learned from these taps, the prosecutors on Friday put 41 officials and players officially under investigation, including Moggi himself. Four clubs are under scrutiny, Napoli, Milan and Fiorentina in addition to Juventus, and 19 serie A and B matches are being examined on suspicion that the results were fixed. Moggi is accused among other things of having locked a referee and two linesmen in a changing room after a game in November 2004 in which Reggina beat Juventus.

Using both favours and menaces like a mafia boss, Moggi kept not only players and referees but also journalists, tax police and prosecutors dancing to his tune, the tapes reveal. He was warmly received by the finance minister and the minister of the interior.

He had a finger in every pie.

The most direct grip he exercised on results was through the players. Moggi's 32-year-old son, Alessandro, is the boss of GEA, the biggest and most important players' agency in Italy, which controls 200 professional players and 24 coaches. GEA is the subject of a separate criminal investigation.

When Juventus played Siena last month, seven of the players in the Siena line-up were on GEA's books, raising obvious questions of who those players needed to please most, Siena's manager or GEA's boss's dad. Juventus won the game 3-0.

The wiretaps indicate that Moggi's relationship with Pierluigi Pairetto, joint head of the Italian referees' association, was crucial to obtaining the right results. In leaks from the taps Moggi is heard upbraiding Pairetto for providing a referee who approved a goal against Juventus, or for not securing a referee Moggi had asked for. Pairetto unctuously apologises and promises to do better.

The investigators also believe that Moggi used more Machiavellian means, getting key players in teams Juventus was due to face disqualified in advance of the fixture. He was also said to have kept a special eye on the so-called "moviolista", the replay man who sends reports on contested moments in the game to the referee's earphone. He helped the careers of journalists and sports talk show hosts who sang from the Moggi hymn sheet, and kept the troublemakers off the screens.

Now Italian football is working overtime to clean out the Moggian stables in advance of the World Cup. Yesterday Silvio Berlusconi, owner of Juventus's arch-rival Milan, commented, "It's a terrible business. Don't ask me about it."

Francesco Totti, captain of Roma, commented, "We need to start over from zero and hand out significant punishments. People who contribute nothing should be cleared out of the game and only those who play with passion kept in it."