It was an incongruous place for an AFL scandal to unfold: on a family holiday in Italy during the northern winter of 2025.

On the morning of 8 January that year, an image of Luke Sayers’ penis was posted on his X account.

Sayers is the former president and chief executive of two blue-blooded institutions: the Carlton football club, and PwC.

The post, in which a senior executive of a major Carlton sponsor was also tagged, was deleted about 15 minutes later. Instead, the @LukeSayers account posted: “Sorry my account has been hacked – please ignore all posts”.

The post was anything but ignored: there was a torrent of “dick pic” stories, the collapse of Sayers’ marriage to Cate, with whom he shares four daughters, and Sayers stepped away as a director at Carlton.

And then this January, a little over a year after the post, Cate Sayers sued her husband for defamation and invading her privacy.

A statutory declaration he signed explaining the post wrongly blamed her, she said, and included confidential information, some of it false, about her sexual history, mental health, medical history and relationships with family members and law enforcement.

Her Victorian supreme court case may expose something far more substantial than fodder for lurid jokes and gossip on a failed marriage: how the AFL investigates its own, pulling back the veil on processes criticised as self-serving and opaque.

In documents filed before the court last week, Cate Sayers claims that the AFL took only two weeks to clear her husband of making the post and any wrongdoing, seemingly because it accepted the truth of his statutory declaration without properly investigating.

That declaration contained Luke Sayers’ version of how the photo came to be posted: that he was showering in the Italian property and his phone was in an adjoining bedroom when it was published.

He claimed the photo was taken for medical purposes and that, other than himself, only Cate Sayers knew both about the photo’s existence, and about the woman tagged in the post.

The day after the post was published, Luke Sayers claims his wife said words to the effect of: “Let’s see how you get out of this one.”

The statutory declaration itself has not been released to the media but Cate Sayers’ lawyers claim in court documents it contained two defamatory imputations: that she accessed his X account without his knowledge and posted the image, and that she suffers from mental illness (including bipolar and multi personality disorder) for which she has been prescribed medication that she refuses to take, so her denials about posting the photo cannot be trusted.

Cate Sayers’ lawyers said in court documents the AFL investigation and a process established by Carlton “were not conducted adequately or honestly”: she was not interviewed by the AFL, which also did not forensically examine Luke Sayers’ phone, X account or the photo, nor ask for any proof of the medical issue which he claimed was the reason for the photo existing.

“In carrying out its so-called ‘investigation’ the AFL failed to follow its own Respect and Responsibility Investigations Protocol,” her lawyers said in court documents.

“The AFL did not carry out an adequate, independent or impartial investigation as it worked closely with Carlton and Luke directly to provide an outcome that publicly exonerated Luke from any wrongdoing [and] inferred that the circumstances relating to the publication of the X Post related to Luke’s family.”

There were 11 false claims in the statutory declaration, Cate Sayers’ lawyers argue in court documents, including that she was raped as a schoolchild by her teacher and his wife, and that the teacher was serving a life sentence for the crimes.

Luke Sayers’ lawyers are yet to respond to the latest claims filed by his wife, which also say that a 20 March letter from his lawyers contained an admission that the photo was not taken for medical purposes.

In earlier court documents, lawyers for Luke Sayers say that the contents of the statutory declaration were true and that he was required to file it as part of the AFL investigation.

He also argues that it was a confidential and legally privileged document, the contents of which had only become further publicised by his wife’s court action.

Cate Sayers’ claims about her privacy failed “to disclose a cause of action, [were] vague, embarrassing and liable to be struck out”, Luke Sayers argued, though he admitted the statutory declaration contained material of the nature she had claimed.

In court documents, his lawyers described the AFL investigation as a process that could compel him to present evidence and punish him should he fail to comply.

The statutory declaration was provided after the AFL’s general counsel, Stephen Meade, requested it on 18 January 2025, saying it should address “issues of concern” including the circumstances under which the photo was taken, his denial that he posted it, who knew his phone and social media passwords, and why Luke Sayers had not reported the matter to police, his lawyers claim in court documents.

In a statement, AFL spokesperson Jay Allen said: “Across January 2025, the AFL investigated the matter to understand if Mr Sayers had breached AFL rules as a registered official, in his then role as Carlton President.

“The AFL’s jurisdiction is confined to registered officials and the potential breach of any AFL Rules. The AFL stands by its process in relation to this matter.

“Mr Sayers is no longer a registered AFL official and this matter between Mr and Mrs Sayers is currently before the courts.”

Carlton declined to comment but is understood to deny it colluded with the AFL in any way during its investigation.

Luke Sayers hired Sharon McCrohan, a communications consultant, former journalist and director of communications for two Victorian premiers, to advise him after the X post; last August, she was appointed to the AFL as its executive general manager corporate affairs.

In the court documents filed last week, Cate Sayers’ lawyers noted that further information would be provided about her claims after “subpoenas to relevant parties”.

It is understood McCrohan and other figures at the AFL have been forewarned to retain all communications relating to the matter but that subpoenas are yet to be issued. The possibility of the AFL being subpoenaed was first reported by the Herald Sun.

Allen did not comment on the likelihood of the AFL being subpoenaed by lawyers for Cate Sayers to provide documents in relation to the case.

Cate Sayers’ case is set to return to court next month, as lawyers for her husband seek to have the matter moved to the federal circuit and family court of Australia.

If this bid fails, the case is listed for a judge-alone trial in November.