They were made with the representation of young promises of Serbian football, Romanian and other European countries, and then offered their signing to leading teams. Subsequently, and through a complex corporate framework in which the Cypriot club Apollon Limassol allegedly played a key role, they managed to ensure that the millionaire benefits they obtained would not be taxed. The last step was the laundering of that money with the acquisition of luxury homes on the coast of Mallorca. Agents of the Central Operating Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard have dealt in Operation Lanigan a blow to the darkest backroom of international football in collaboration with the Tax Agency and Europol. There are five investigated, among them Fali Ramadani, representative among others of Serbian Real Madrid player Luka Jovic, and his partner, Serbian exporter Nicola Damjanac. They are accused of tax crimes and alleged laundering in Spain of 10 million euros. All of them will testify in the next few days before the judge of the National Court María Tardón.
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In the course of the investigation, the Civil Guard has requested documentation from numerous Spanish First and Second Division teams about the signings of players represented by Ramadani. These contracts include those of Jovic (Real Madrid), Nikola Kalinic, Stefan Savic (both for Atlético de Madrid), Stevan Jovetic, Yevhen Konoplyanka (both of Sevilla), Charly Musonda (Betis), Haris Seferovic (Real Sociedad) , Nemanja Radoja (Celtic), Ante Coric (Sporting de Gijón), Stefan Scepovic (Málaga), Armando Sadiku (Levante) and Sasa Zdjelar (Mallorca), among others. However, the sources consulted emphasize to EL PAÍS that none of the teams that have been requested documentation or the players who represented the now accused are involved in the alleged irregularities detected.
The start of Operation Lanigan dates back to 2017, when the Civil Guard detected that Ramadani and Damjanac, who controlled the sports agency representing Lian Sports (now called Primus Consulting, and considered the ninth in the world by turnover and one of the largest in Europe) had acquired a luxury apartment and villa, as well as land to build another home in the Mallorcan town of Calviá through "a complicated corporate framework to hide the true ownership" of the properties, according to a note made public this Tuesday. The UCO agents from then on carried out an "exhaustive follow-up" of the international origin of the funds used for such purchases until uncovering that the two suspects were supposedly part of "a criminal organization" that controlled several football clubs in Serbia, Belgium and Cyprus, including Apollon Limassol, key in the plot, according to sources close to the investigation.
Thanks to the documentation revealed through the Football Leaks website, which in recent years has uncovered numerous irregularities from the world of football, the researchers found that these teams under control served as a screen to make fictional signings through which both representatives made more expensive the price of the players and they obtained great benefits at the cost of causing economic damage to both the football teams and the treasury of various countries, where they avoided paying taxes. The scope of the investigations led those responsible to ask for Europol's collaboration to facilitate cooperation with the police of other countries.
As a key part of the framework, the Civil Guard points to a tax advisory office based in Malta and with offices in other countries. According to the note of the armed institute, the employees of this office participated "in the concealment and later introduction in Spain of part of the money obtained by the investigated ones, as well as in the strategy of fiscal relocation of the mentioned ones to avoid the payment of taxes".
Since 2017, the year in which the research began, the researchers have introduced in Spain an amount exceeding 10 million euros both for the acquisition of luxury goods and for maintaining a high standard of living. At this time, the Civil Guard has made a hundred documentation requirements to multiple football clubs, societies and law firms in eleven Spanish provinces for the signing of players through both representatives. With the information collected, two weeks ago the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor filed a complaint against the alleged implicated parties at the National Court. Judge Tardón authorized the records last week of the domiciles of the investigated and in the business headquarters of several entities of the network and in a law firm of Barcelona.
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