Alex Trelinski
A TOP football agent, Fali Ramadani, has been accused of defrauding Spain’s Tax Agency of €12 million by not declaring money that allowed him to buy a luxury villa in Mallorca.
The National Court has estimated the sum based on information from a website called Football Leaks which investigates financial transactions in the sport.
The court says that a Malta-based company, Unique Properties, bought the land on which the Calvia villa was built and that Ramadani and his wife have lived there for nearly a decade.
The Guardia Civil has been probing Ramadani’s business dealings since 2020 for tax fraud and money laundering.
Operation Lanigan traced funds from Unique Properties to Mallorca, linked to people behind Lian Sports, the world’s fifth-largest football agency, according to Forbes magazine.
Ramadani and his wife requested last December that the proceedings be dropped on the claim they are not liable to pay tax in Spain because they don’t spend more than six months per year in the country.
The National Court however rejected that claim- at least for the time being- as it continues its investigations.
Ramadani’s lawyer has asked for the case to be transferred to a Palma court on the basis that the amount of money involved in the alleged fraud is not significant enough and therefore the jurisdiction of a central investigating court is not needed.
The court’s view however is that it is looking into a complex fraud that needs extensive international cooperation to trace Ramadani’s accounts and those of his associates.
Some of his income is allegedly linked to a complicated operation that uses ‘ghost clubs’ in the Balkans to justify signings and other measures to ‘legalise’ his money.
The National Court stated that a transfer to a Palma court would cause an ‘undesirable’ delay in the judicial process.
The court has asked for information from several La Liga clubs about certain signings, including RCD Mallorca.
The conclusion of the investigation will depend on obtaining several documents from Portugal from a whistle-blower agent who leaked information to the Football Leaks website.
