A Zagreb court has dropped perjury charges against Croatia national football team player Dejan Lovren, state news agency Hina reported on Monday.

Lovren, who currently plays with Liverpool FC, was charged with giving false testimony at the trial of the former boss of Dinamo Zagreb, Zdravko Mamic, and another three defendants.

The indictment was issued by the Osijek County Prosecutor’s Office in September 2018, and was dismissed on January 25.
The ruling may be appealed within three days of its receipt.

According to unofficial information, the indictment was dropped for the same reasons as in the perjury case of another member of the national football team, Luka Modric. In his case the same court found that there was no probable cause to try him.

Prosecutors argued that on September 1, 2017, at a hearing in the trial of Zdravko Mamic and others, Lovren had consciously lied under oath regarding his transfer from Dinamo Zagreb.

According to court records, an annex was signed to a contract entitling Lovren to 50 percent of the compensation of his transfer from Dinamo Zagreb to the French powerhouse Olympique Lyonnais in 2010. The rest was set aside for Dinamo.

As part of his testimony, Lovren claimed the annex was inserted before his transfer to Lyon, but prosecutors alleged that the annex was signed after the defender’s move and then backdated.

Mamic, charged by the anti-corruption police Uskok with illegally syphoning 116 million kuna (€15.7 million) from the club, as well as tax evasion, for not paying 12.2 million kuna (€1.6 million) in taxes, was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 6.5 years in prison in a first instance ruling in June last year. He is currently in the town of Medjugorje in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he still resides, since he holds the citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina along with Croatian citizenship.

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