Croatia’s Osijek county court sentenced former executive director of Dinamo Zagreb, Zdravko Mamic, to six and a half years imprisonment for corruption on June 6. 

Mamic, for a long time the most powerful man in Croatian football, was tried for embezzlement and tax evasion. Three other defendants, Mamic’s younger brother, Zoran Mamic, former Dinamo executive Damir Vrbanovic, and tax official Milan Pernar, also received prison sentences.

Zdravko and the other three defendants were charged by the anti-corruption police with tax evasion amounting to HRK12.2mn (€1.63mn) and siphoning off profits worth HRK116mn from player transfers, including those of Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric and Liverpool's Dejan Lovren.

A total of 97 witnesses were invited to testify during the trial. In March this year, Croatian captain Modric was charged for false testimony in Mamic’s trial, according to Total Croatia News.

In the same case, Zoran Mamic was sentenced to four years and 11 months in prison, Vrbanovic to three years and Pernar to four years and two months in prison, Hina news agency reported.

One day before the verdict, the ex-boss of Dinamo had left Croatia for the town of Medjugorje in neighbouring Bosnia & Herzegovina. During a news conference held in Bosnia, Mamic called the verdict “monstrous” and said he would remain in the neighbouring country, announcing a “fierce struggle” against those who he claimed had set him up.

“I could continue the monologue on why I think the verdict is legally unsustainable, monstruous, false… the reasoning of the verdict makes me angry, it is dangerous and one can expect anything,” Mamic said, according to Total Croatia News.

“I guarantee that everyone who was part of this process will pay the price for it,” he added.

The Mamic brothers were first arrested in mid-2015 on suspicion of tax evasion, bribery and other offences. In November 2015, Mamic was placed in investigative custody after the finance ministry’s tax fraud investigators found that €10.1mn and £500,000 had been siphoned off from the football club through offshore companies since 2004.