May 4, 2016
Yesterday, during Operation Matrioskas, the Portuguese Police (Polícia Judiciária), supported by Europol, dismantled a transnational organised criminal group mainly composed of Russian citizens who were dedicated to money laundering through the football sector.
Active since at least 2008, this criminal network is thought to be a cell of an important Russian mafia group, directly responsible for laundering several million euros across numerous EU countries, most of it believed to derive from polycriminal activities committed outside the EU area.
The group’s known modus operandi is to identify EU football clubs in financial distress, then infiltrate them with benefactors who provide much needed short-term donations or investments.
After gaining trust through donating, these same benefactors orchestrate the purchase of the clubs. The purchase of such clubs is facilitated by individuals operating as front men for opaque and sophisticated networks of holding companies invariably owned by shell companies registered offshore and in tax havens. Thus the real owners and those who ultimately control the club remain unidentified, as does the true origin of the funds used to purchase them.
Once clubs are under the control of the Russian mafia, the large scope of financial transactions, cross-border money flows, and shortcomings in governance allow clubs to be used to launder dirty money (usually via the over- or under-valuation of players on the transfer market and on television rights deals), as well as for betting activities (both for the generation of illegal proceeds due to match fixing or for pure money laundering purposes).