Does the mafia control Croatian football? Football Leaks has come up with some shocking revelations in the past!

It is one of the most controversial topics that has surfaced in recent years. The Mamić brothers were heavily involved in the financial corruption of Dinamo Zagreb and set in motion an intricate structure that was then part of a very extensive investigation. In any case, what was happening not only in the Croatian club is perhaps unprecedented…

It is 2016, when Football Leaks arrives on the world football scene. And they weren’t about to stop at anything. That year they began working with 12 leading European media outlets, but their closest relationship was with Germany’s Der Spiegel.

They subsequently sent a massive 1.9 terabyte data set containing 18.6 million documents to Der Spiegel’s editorial office. This included all kinds of stolen material, original contracts, cash flows, business practices, and other various arrangements.

Today, it is the biggest leak in the history of sport and Football Leaks is known worldwide. And thanks to them, the beautiful sport that football undoubtedly is has been cleared, at least in a small part. And it still is.

Thanks to Football Leaks, for example, Manchester City were investigated for breaches of financial fair play and Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were accused of tax fraud. We have published several articles on this topic in the past and now we want to remind you of another scandal.

It concerns in particular the transfers of Croatian footballers to leading European clubs. The first example is the transfer of Alen Halilovic to Barcelona.

Dinamo Zagreb & Rasport Management AG

3. july 2012, the CEO signs a contract with Rasport Management AG, based in Obwalden, Switzerland. And as the Football Leaks book says, Obwalden is well known for its low tax rates and very limited disclosure obligations.

This contract is supposed to provide for how the profits from Halilovic’s transfer to Barcelona will be split in the future, i.e. 50% was to go to Rasport Management, the other half to Dinamo Zagreb.

The fact that the football services of a then only 16-year-old youngster are being shamelessly traded is one thing, but the other thing, no less puzzling, is why would a Croatian club actually deprive itself of money and enter into a cooperation with a dubious company?

Dinamo was supposed to get a share of the player’s future transfers. This is standard in football, especially with young footballers. In fact, the club insures itself the added value of the whole thing – “we brought him up, we want something extra”.

In the book, and also in the Football Leaks material published by Der Spiegel and other media, we find an explanation.

“When one follows the trail of this dubious deal, one soon comes across three men who all bear the surname Mamic and come from the same family,” the Football Leaks book says.

Behind it all is a trio of brothers from the Mamic family…

The most important member is Zdravko Mamić, former president of Dinamo Zagreb (2003-2016). Zoran, in turn, was a Bundesliga footballer and later the club’s sporting director. Mario Mamić was a player agent by profession, now he is an advisor at one of the largest microfinance institutions worldwide – ASA International.

It provides socially responsible loans to low-income people. But Zdravko in particular is one of the most controversial figures in world football.

He is linked to organised crime in terms of embezzlement, tax evasion and money laundering. He’s even been in prison twice! The first time for a few days for an investigation into corruption, the second time he was released on bail. According to Croatian authorities, the brothers, Zdravko and Zoran Mamic, were alleged to have diverted several million euros from the sale of Dinamo Zagreb stars abroad.

Specifically, the transfers of Luka Modric to Tottenham, Eduardo to Arsenal, Dejan Lovren to Olympique Lyon and Mario Mandzukic to Wolfsburg. However, they were not the only accused persons, at least in the context of this case.

An unnamed official of the Croatian tax authorities and a high-ranking official of the national football association, who also held a senior position at Dinamo Zagreb, were also implicated in the affair.

The football business is an area in the Balkans that will probably never be completely clean, but this trio of brothers is also involved in the above-mentioned company. Based on further investigations, and according to the findings of the Sarno prosecutor’s office, very suspicious payments were made through Rasport Management AG, be it various brokerage services or even non-existent player transfers!

Worse still, Zdravko probably interfered significantly in the Croatian football league as such. In fact, Football Leaks compared all ten Dinamo Zagreb titles (2006-2016) to the events of the 1970s and 1980s, when the German intelligence chief’s favourite club also won ten championships in a row.

This was the case of Stas Erich Mielke, who clearly supported his Dynamo Berlin more than would have been appropriate. Former club officials also sold the rights of players such as Mateo Kovacic, Tin Jedvaj and Mijat Gacinovic without any qualms. All of this, of course, in order to further profit from the agreement between the Croatian giant and Rasport.

The situation with this trio was very similar to that of Halilovic. In any case, the company’s Swiss lawyer (Gianpaolo Monteneri – ed.) did not want to comment on Football Leaks’ inquiries about these unfair practices. However, he also did not comment on the accusations – almost arrogant behaviour on the part of the Croatian company.

Yet the applicant’s conclusion in this case speaks quite clearly – these are payments of tens of millions of euros. “We are dealing with economic crime of the coarsest grain,” reads the book Football Leaks. What makes the whole thing interesting for the wider public, Zdravko still has valuable contacts in Croatian politics and media.

It is not surprising that the trio of brothers have been able to cash in on the transfers of young footballers for so long. The question of who all was involved in the intricate game is still very difficult to answer today. However, the Monteneri played a very significant role in this business. After he left FIFA in 2005, he set up a Zurich-based law firm – Monteneri Sports Law.

Football Leaks revealed that his firm in turn had an affair with a Canadian company called PSM Pro Soccer Management. And all of them were working together with the Mamic brothers’ organisation. If you are already lost in this, know that it is really worth collecting the scraps of information not only from the Football Leaks book or materials, but also from other newspapers that have been involved in extensive investigative work in cooperation with Football Leaks.

And here we come to the stage where things are picking up significantly

And it’s about to get worse. As reported by the Croatian newspaper Nacional, Zdravko applied for a €25 million loan at the time, with Dinamo Zagreb as the recipient. And here begins a very complicated story involving four companies. This loan to Dinamo was granted by a Maltese company called Gettysburg Limited, which is managed for a change by Zdravko Mamic’s Russian partner.

This loan, although we can endlessly argue about how much the club itself actually collected, was repaid with 50 per cent of all the income Dinamo was to receive from future transfers!

The extent to which this was an intricate structure is also demonstrated by the fact that the money collected from the transfers of Marcel Brozovic (Inter Milan) and Duje Čop (Cagliari) flowed through two companies – Gettysburg Limited, PSM Pro Soccer Management. The whole circle is then completed by the cooperation of these two companies with Monteneri’s company in Zurich.

However, not only the prosecutors in Obwalden were involved in this extensive investigation, but also the prosecutors in the canton of Geneva, where the bank accounts of Rasport Management AG were opened in local banks. Both parties then passed on the results of the investigation to elite prosecutors in Croatia. They subsequently dropped the prosecution and brought charges of criminal conspiracy and breach of trust in business dealings to court.

Various questions from Football Leaks and later Nacional and Swiss prosecutors regarding the transfers were not answered by any of the parties involved. FIFA officials, Nikky Arthur Vuksan and Danijel Kuraja, preferred not to even respond to questions.

Even the clubs themselves, namely Liverpool, Southampton and Real Madrid, were somewhat surprisingly unwilling to comment.

These football clubs were transferring the so-called Image Rights (or the money earned by footballers, for example, for appearing in advertisements – ed.) – of players to Rasport Management. It was Dejan Lovren for Liverpool, Dusan Tadic for the other English team and the last on the list is Kovacic.

The question was where the €4.5 million profit from the rights actually went. And here, too, the Football Leaks dossier gives us another clue. We find an invoice that was sent on behalf of Rasport Management. The recipient was Mislav Mamic, a close relative of Zdravko and Mario.

The address given for the postal package containing this invoice was 4A Fijanova Street in Zagreb. However, no such name appears at this address, as the Football Leaks documents reveal. On the contrary, there are two companies here. The first is a company called Mamić Sport Agencija, whose main activity was selling Dinamo Zagreb’s top talents.

The second is Aqua MM, whose director at the time was none other than Mario Mamić. Today, the heads of this company are two persons – Mislav Mamić and, wonder of wonders, Danijel Kuraja. Of course, he did not answer subsequent questions about his role in Rasport and Aqua MM, where Mislav is an advisor.

Zdravko Mamic received six and a half years in prison for these sins, while his brother Zoran was to serve four years and eight months. However, the third on the list, Mario, is still at large and is currently working for ASA International, where he is a football consultant. A company that Zdravko also abused for many strange transactions related to the above mentioned case.

Sources