Former chairwoman of the Wisła Kraków football club Marzena S. was detained on Tuesday by the Central Bureau of Police Investigations. Apart from her, the bureau also detained Anna M.-Z., the wife of gangster Tadeusz C. who had controlled the club until last year, and the former chairman and vice chairman of the club Robert S. The arrests were confirmed by the spokeswoman for the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Poznań. According to tvn24.pl portal, the case pertains to syphoning off of at least hundreds of thousands zlotys from Wisła Kraków.
According to tvn24.pl, Tuesday's police operation was a result of an investigation carried out by the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Poznań, which was examining a lead regarding mismanagement in Wisła Kraków SA company. The case was launched in the late December 2018, when the club was in debt up to its ears and balancing on the brink of bankruptcy. It was then when the former management, including Marzena S., decided to sell the club for a symbollic 1 zloty to exotic investors from Cambodia and Sweden. The men even showed up in Kraków, but without the money they promised to invest in the club. Wisła was saved at the last moment by businessmen Jarosław Królewski and Tomasz Jażdzyński, Poland's international football star Jakub Błaszczykowski, as well as with huge help from the supporters.
Testimony of "Misiek"
Marzena S. was at the helm of Wisła Kraków from August 2016 until December 2018. As the report by "Superwizjer" TVN from September 2018 showed, at the time the club was run by an organized crime group formed by football hooligans calling themselves the Sharks.
The group was led by Paweł M. aka "Misiek" and Grzegorz Z. aka "Zielak". The latter was detained in May 2018 during police operation that led to more than 20 hooligans being arrested. "Misiek" managed to escape the police then, but was arrested a few months later in Italy.
Tuesday's arrests were made possible, among other things, thanks to testimony given by "Misiek", who decided to cooperate with the investigators. According to his statement, the gangsters practically decided about everything in the club, including football transfers, employing other gang members and their partners, as well as spending club's money on criminal activity.
Syphoning mechanism
According to tvn24.pl portal, the mechanism of syphoning money from Wisła Kraków was based on fictitious contracts signed by the club's board, including Marzena S., with a company owned by Anna M.-Z., the wife of Grzegorz Z. aka "Zielak" (also detained by the police).
This way, at least 824.000 zlotys disappeared from Wisła Kraków's account. Money transfers were described as "marketing counselling", "intermediation in sponsorship acquiring", although according to the Central Registration and Information on Business, Anna M.-Z.'s company was registered as "nurses and midwives practice", and the woman herself is a nurse by trade and has worked in one of the hospitals in Kraków. She has never professionally dealt with marketing or football.
Other charges pressed against the former board of Wisła Kraków pertain to a resolution passed by them on February 17, 2017. Under the resolution, the then board - chairwoman Marzena S. and vice chairman Damian D. (the man has been under arrest for last few months - according to the investigators, apart from being a board member, he is said to have been selling drugs and being a member of the Sharks) were given pay rises - 45.000 zloty instead of 10.000 per per month.
However, according to the investigators, the document was signed in violation of the law and should not have been legally binding. Furthermore, paying out salaries based on the document is believed to have been to the detriment of the company. Meanwhile, Marzena S. and Damian D. were receiving much higher pay. In total, during several months, they were paid hundreds of thousands zloty each. The investigators also found out that the board was sharing their pay with "Misiek" and "Zielak". Part of that money was used by the gangsters to buy narcotics.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 News in English, tvn24.pl