Police take Partizan papers on Stevanovic transfer
The check concerns a January 2021 deal and Fali Ramadani's agency. The club handed over full documentation, and Aleksandar Pivljanin expects more checks.
On Monday, November 2, officers of the Criminal Police Directorate walked into the FK Partizan premises on Humska Street and asked for documentation. The club handed over all of it, and the police took away files related to one deal from January 2021: the sale of Filip Stevanovic to Manchester City.
According to Sport klub, the visit did not last long, because the relevant files were seized quickly. The report the police are acting on was filed much earlier, but who filed it and on what date has not been disclosed.
What exactly is being checked in the 2021 deal?
The suspicion concerns irregularities in the arrangement with the agency that handled the transfer. The deal was done by the LIAN sports group, headed by Fali Ramadani. Partizan was run at the time by president Milorad Vucelic and general manager Milos Vazura, and the late professor Vladimir Vuletic also took part in the negotiations.
According to published information, the contract provided for a fixed fee of 6.5 million euros and up to 1.5 million euros in bonuses. The bonuses grew with the number of games played, and there were none tied to a future sale of the player. Sport klub says in the same article that the sale was worth about 8 million euros, while Pivljanin mentioned roughly 8.5 million on the show, so the sum from the sources and his figure do not match.
Stevanovic signed a four-and-a-half-year contract with City, but stayed at Partizan on loan for another six months. He never made his debut for City and later played on loan at Heerenveen, Santa Clara and Lommel. He is now without a club.
What did Aleksandar Pivljanin say about it?
Sport klub journalist and commentator Aleksandar Pivljanin was a guest on the “SportSKi dan” show on N1 television on November 4, where host Dragan Cica asked him why it took a change of government for anyone to act on the report. Pivljanin answered:
“The people from the Criminal Police Directorate will now comb through those papers. The documentation has been handed over and we will see what the next step is. But, as you could see in the preview a moment ago, this will not be the only case. I expect that a lot will be checked and I fully support that. The current management, I repeat, filed many reports earlier, but someone decided that they should stay in certain drawers. Now the time has come for those drawers to slowly be opened and for much of what happened during the term and work of the previous management to be checked. And obviously there will be a lot, a lot of that.”
He added that he would like to see as soon as possible what went on:
“I repeat, I would like us to see as soon as possible everything that happened there and how much the club was harmed, and I believe the club was seriously harmed indeed.”
He spoke about the player separately: “This is not only about the transfer of Filip Stevanovic. He probably came up first because he is the most valuable. We are talking about roughly 8.5 million euros. Filip left long ago, it has been five and a half years already. He has no club at the moment. He had a serious injury, his career went completely the wrong way and I feel very sorry about that.” He then said: “He is perhaps the greatest talent Partizan has had in the last five years.”
Will the police come back to Humska Street?
Sport klub reports that several other suspected transfers from the same period were reported earlier, so it is not ruled out that the Criminal Police Directorate will visit the club again soon. Pivljanin, as his statement shows, expected exactly that.
The same show also covered Partizan’s new FIFA suspension over a debt to former player Kanute, which we reported on earlier. That is a separate story, unrelated to the 2021 transfer, and Pivljanin said of it: “So, that will be resolved and the suspension will be lifted.”
