Stockholm (AFP) – A court in Sweden sentenced two Swedes to prison on Friday for defrauding Chinese football club Shanghai SIPG of 370,000 euros ($403,000) during the transfer of Brazilian star Hulk.
Hussein Barjawi, 33, was sentenced to three years in prison.
After the email account of Hulk’s previous club, Zenit Saint Petersburg, was hacked in 2016, Barjawi passed himself off as a Brazilian lawyer serving as an intermediary in the transfer deal.
He sent SIPG an invoice for 371,420 euros, to be deposited in a bank account in Sweden that belonged to a company he owned in the southern town of Malmo.
Despite an intricate system of multiple money transfers to middle-men to launder the funds, Barjawi was not able to withdraw the money before the bank became suspicious about its origins and blocked it.
Barjawi’s money-laundering accomplice Silvija Jansson, 38, was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Three other people who played minor roles in the fraud scheme were given fines.
“All of the implicated people denied any wrongdoing and said someone else had committed the crimes,” the Malmo court said in a statement.
The trial also covered a long slew of other frauds committed.
