The 27-year-old former Allsvenskan football star and U21 national team player is the main person at the match-fixing trial in Malmö District Court, which began on Tuesday.
Common to the three co-defendants is that they belonged to one and the same scandal-laden football club.
In 2014, it ended up the southern Swedish club in the hot air after one of the team’s players anonymously testified about extensive match-fixing. According to the player, the team would have participated in four matches in 2013 and two in 2014.
The player claimed that at least five teammates made big money on the cheat. Svenska Spel sounded the alarm about deviating game patterns around the two matches in 2014, but the police’s preliminary investigation was dropped.
In 2016, one of the club’s matches was reported to the police again, after Svenska Spel discovered how a relative of one of the team’s key players played remarkably large sums that the team would lose.
The club management firmly denied that the team was involved in match-fixing.
But the rumors took new fart since SVT’s Assignment review reviewed match-fixing in Sweden. One of the club’s players, also anonymously, told about how he was offered large sums to manipulate results. The person who on at least two occasions tried to fix matches, was the former superettan player from Skåne who in 2019 together with the former AIK player Dickson Etuhu was sentenced for having tried to bribe AIK’s goalkeeper Kenny Stamatopolous before the Allsvenskan big match against IFK Göteborg 2017 .
On one of the occasions, the man must have offered SEK 200,000 so that the player in the southern Swedish team would get teammates in the match-fixing and make sure that they lost. The player said no.
All three now match-fixing suspected players played for the club in question in 2013. Two of them were also active in 2014 and one also in 2016. No evidence has ever been presented that they were involved in rigged matches in the association, which went bankrupt in 2017 and was excluded. of the Swedish Football Association.
– The trial began on Tuesday in Malmö District Court.
Photo: Anders Hansson
In Malmö District Court Two of the players are accused of having lent 300,000 to the former Allsvenskan star and then from 27 newly opened gaming accounts won just over 190,000 kronor that he would receive a yellow card in an Allsvenskan match.
The indictment states that the money that the Allsvenskan player may borrow is believed to have come from a 30-year-old football player who is not a suspect in the match-fixing case. According to an SMS conversation, the man demands that he get his money back. The 30-year-old has also previously belonged to the southern Swedish scandal club.
The accused football players have in interrogation denied that the money had come from the 30-year-old and say that they invented the story. Police suspect that the accused do not want to involve the former club mate, who in 2011 was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for robbery and illegal deprivation of liberty.
Last week The 30-year-old was arrested by Malmö District Court on suspicion of robbery, unlawful deprivation of liberty and attempted aggravated extortion.
When the match-fixing trial in Malmö began, prosecutor Staffan Edlund said that it could not be established that the 30-year-old is the real lender.
– We do not know if it is a person who really had a part in this repayment or if his part is made up, Edlund said.
All four defendants deny the bribery and gambling fraud they were charged with.
None of the accused players wanted to comment after the first day of negotiations.
Read more:
New evidence in the match-fixing case: “It was a loan”
Allsvenskan star in court: “Has lost everything”
The match-fixing trial in Malmö: “Difficult for the athlete to defend himself”
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