Lovren facing 6 Months To 5 Years Jail Term

By Joshua Walters

A court in Croatia has charged Dejan Lovren with perjury in a tax invasion trial of four powerful football people in the Eastern European country. 

The attorney's office in the city of Osijek says the Liverpool centre-back gave false evidence in the trial of former Chief Executive of Dinamo Zagreb, Zdravko Mamic, his brother and two others for tax evasion.

A sentence of false testimony in Croatia carries between six months and five years jail term, and Lovren is faced with the task to exonerate himself or find himself in the cooler.

Mamic and his crew were trialled for not paying 12.2 million Kuna (£1.45m) in tax and diverting 116 million Kuna (£13.85m) from the club, a charge they denied.

The quartet allegedly embezzled funds from Dinamo during transfers involving their players moving to foreign clubs.

The court sentenced Mamic to six-and-a-half years in prison for the offences, but the latter fled to neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Lovren was then with Dynamo, and he, together with then-teammate, Luka Modric, was tasked to give evidence during the trial in March 2018.

Modric told the court there was an agreement, before his transfer to Tottenham in 2008, that Mamic will pay Dinamo half of the £16.5m transfer fee, but prosecutors found later that there was no such thing.

Lovren has now been accused of the same offence, according to the attorney's office and would be trialed in due course.