AIK transfer bill found in drug madness

After a long search for an industrial premises in southern Stockholm, the police attacked. What started as an alleged tax offense turned out to be a drug factory. In total, more than 60 kilos of amphetamine were seized in one of the largest drug seizures of 2019. Police also found several weapons and equipment for the production of amphetamines. In a first stage, a dozen suspects were arrested in various parts of the country.

Another find did not attract as much attention. Among all the documents and documents seized during the search of the house, the police found an invoice dated April 2018 from a Tallinn company, BlueBlueSky OÜ. The client was the company Palm Eleven AG of the Swiss football agent Marco Lichtsteiner and the invoice was 80,000 euros, corresponding to 800,000 crowns. He referred to the “development of a strategy and negotiating conditions” for the transfer of Swedish footballer Nabil Bahoui from AIK to Saudi team Al Ahli.

It is not clear if the invoice was ever paid; DN has repeatedly asked Marco Lichtsteiner for a comment.

Official representatives of the company BlueBlueSky are two Swedes with a long criminal past. One is a 27-year-old woman who DN previously disclosed as one of the Swedes who are connected to the sprawling fraud factory that misleads, among other things, Swedish retirees with bogus investments in bitcoins. She is also one of the suspects at the drug factory and is now charged with aiding and abetting a particularly serious drug crime. They are expected on October 8.

Nabil Bahoui’s club change, which surprised experts and fans, was announced in the summer of 2015. Bahoui, who debuted for the A national team the year before, was said to be relevant to several major clubs, but chose to move. al Al Ahli SC in Saudi Arabia. According to his then-agent Hasan Cetinkaya in connection with the transfer, it was an extremely favorable personal contract of two plus two years with a salary that Bahoui could not refuse. But at six months he had already done his part in the club. In January 2016 he signed for Hamburger SV of the German Bundesliga. Today he is back at AIK.

So what does a company in Estonia have, represented by two persons charged with criminal offenses, who asked a Swiss agent for 800,000 kroner to help him with the transfer from Bahoui to Saudi Arabia?

How did these two people get involved in a deal with a player from the Swedish national team and one of the most famous football clubs in Sweden?

And why is the invoice dated April 2018, almost three years after the transaction was completed?

DN has for several weeks He tried to bring clarity to the game around the Bahoui affair. He himself says in a written comment to DN that he does not know any of the companies or the invoice.

“I don’t know any of the companies. I do not know anything about companies and others, I am just a soccer player who focuses on giving my best in each training session and in each game ”.

“Of course I strongly dissociate myself from all forms of crime,” he writes.

During the DN review, AIK presented four different versions of who was involved. Only when DN confronted the club with information that Lichtsteiner’s company, Palm Eleven, was involved in the deal, did AIK admit that was the case.

“Palm Eleven was paid according to an agreement between them and AIK Football when Nabil left AIK. The above information I provided was unfortunately incorrect, referring to another player who left AIK,” writes the club’s director and CEO, Björn Wesström , in an email.

Therefore, AIK claims to have used the agent company in which the BlueBlueSky invoice is issued. The information that Palm Eleven received compensation during the transfer has not been registered with the Swedish Football Association and, according to DN’s review, has not been known to the public either.

In post-raid interrogations against the drug factory, the police asked the company representative about the bill. She replied incoherently.

“Yes, BlueBlueSky had something to do with it, it would hold meetings or, if the football players made a transfer, it would change teams. That …”, he says in questioning.

Policeman: So did you get some kind of commission when you helped? Some kind of player mediation or?

“Yes, yes, just that, player mediation, yes. But I have no direct memory of this invoice in any case, says the woman.”

The prosecutor in the case tells DN that they did not investigate the bill further because it did not refer to the alleged drug offenses that referred to the preliminary investigation.

On the invoice it indicates BlueBlueSky that the payment should go to an account belonging to another company in Tallinn, Company Finance. The company is run by the alleged director of the drug factory. Among those who may be related to the company is the woman’s boyfriend, a 44-year-old man from Eskilstuna, who was also arrested for the drug craze. He is registered in Tallinn, has an extensive criminal record, and is also linked to bitcoin scams as a gatekeeper at a company in Tallinn. When he got off the ferry at Frihamnen in Stockholm in 2018, he was arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling. During interrogation, he stated that he works in Tallinn as a football transfer consultant.

According to official information provided by AIK to the Swedish Football Association, it was a company in Scotland, SPM Sport Agency, and a named woman who was the club’s mediator in the transfer.

On Wednesday, Björn Wesström finally returned with a written answer to a long series of questions DN asked him and AIK. He apologized and explained that the answers he had given so far were a mix of things that were connected to the business and some that were not. The reason for this is “administrative inconvenience” and “misclassification”.

Wesström now explained that SPM Sport Agency represented AIK in the negotiations with Al Ahli. There was also an agreement between AIK Football and Palm Eleven, in which the Swiss company was entitled to a certain part of the transfer fee.

“The reason that agreement was not registered with SvFF was that it was not paid in its capacity as an intermediary, but because Palm Eleven had an agreed ownership over the financial rights of the players. These agreements are confidential and therefore we will not comment further on the content, “Wesström writes.

But the big question remains. Why did BlueBlueSky invoice Palm Eleven?

Wesström emphasizes that AIK does not have and has not had any connection with BlueBlueSky, its operations or representatives.

“AIK Football makes standardized controls of the intermediaries with whom we sign agreements, the associations are the ones that legitimize the intermediaries. AIK Football regrets if it happens that a player with whom we have no relationship or agreement has used our name for our own benefit or to discredit us or our partners, ”Wesström writes.

What action will AIK take regarding DN information?

“We are taking it seriously and will discuss the possible consequences.”

So who are SPM Sport Agency and the Maltese woman who, according to the Swedish Football Federation’s record, is the AIK mediator in the transfer?

The woman is not a soccer agent, but a professional business coach based in Malta. The company he represents offers, among other things, tax planning, bank accounts in tax havens and the controversial opportunity to buy European citizenship. She is originally from Russia, but has strong ties to Estonia. The company you work for is also owned by an Estonian company and the site markets, among other things, company registrations in Estonia.

SPM Sport Agency is a now defunct letterbox company registered in the Scottish capital Edinburgh. The company form is a limited partnership form best known for providing the opportunity to conceal the actual representatives of the company. Other companies are approved as company representatives; a meeting with natural persons is not necessary.

SPM Sport Agency LLP was founded by two anonymous companies registered at the same address in Belize, a scheme that makes it impossible to find out who the true owner is. The small Central American country is a notorious offshore zone that in several reports has been identified as a risk country for money laundering and drug trafficking. In one of the documents of the Scottish company, DN finds the signature of the Maltese woman, as representative of one of the companies in Belize, Miramax Ltd. It is not known who is the true owner of any of the companies.

The lawyer for the Swedish Football Association, Anders Hübinette, says that the brokerage rules do not approve of goal and bastion arrangements for transfers. According to the association, there are no other traces of the SPM Sport Agency or the Maltese woman in the association’s record. The company is also not found in a review of all the agents / intermediaries that the Allsvenskan teams reported to the association that they used during the 2016-2019 seasons.

DN has looked up the woman on various phone numbers and emails, but has not returned.

Björn Wesström has So far he has not been willing to answer questions about how AIK came into contact with SPM Sport Agency, why they chose to hire that particular company and who is the real director of the company.

Hasan Cetinkaya was Bahoui’s agent on the transfer in 2015. He confirms that SPM Sport Agency was AIK’s representative on the deal, but refers all questions about the company to the Maltese woman and AIK.

– I don’t want to answer things for other companies or for AIK, they have to do it themselves, says Cetinkaya.

He says he is unaware that Palm Eleven was involved in the deal and that he has never heard of the BlueBlueSky company.

Nabil Bahoui tells DN that he decided to move to Saudi Arabia for purely financial reasons, but that he chose to move on when the offer to play in the Bundesliga came in.

“As I said in previous interviews, the financial part played an important role because I wanted to secure my family’s finances. So sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way I thought, and it was difficult. But I had the opportunity to go to the Bundesliga, one of the best leagues in the world, and to the Hamburger SV club with a rich history, “he writes.

“I also wanted to return to the Swedish national team and that is why I chose to go to Germany at the same time that they also paid well.”