Fraudster came close to receiving one million euros for Lewandowski transfer
Imbroglio after signing Polish striker from Bayern Munich
According to an investigation by Cadena SER, a fraudster posed as Israeli businessman Pini Zahavi and, in July 2022, managed to get Barcelona to transfer him one million euros as a commission for the Catalans’ signing of Robert Lewandowski from Bayern Munich, in a deal worth €45 million, plus €5 million in bonuses.
On 29 July of that year, several members of the Blaugrana board received an unsuspecting email signed by Pini Zahavi, giving details of a bank account at the Bank of Cyprus to which the aforementioned amount was to be sent. However, this account was not in the name of Pini Zahavi, a well-known player agent, but rather of his supposed lawyer, the Englishman Michael Gerardus Hermanus Demon.
The bank account had been opened days before and received the transfer of one million euros, but the amount was frozen after an investigation by the bank, which considered the amount suspicious, since, until this transfer, there had been no movement regarding the account. According to Cadena SER, the man who pretended to be Pini Zahavi contacted the bank several times, demanding the release of the money, but the bank did not give in to the pressure and ended up closing the account in October of that year.
Regarding the million euros, the amount was recovered by Barcelona and the scam is said to have started when Michael Hermanus Gerardus Demon, Pini Zahavi’s supposed lawyer, was robbed and left without the documents with which the account was then opened at the Cypriot bank, something that the institution denies, highlighting that opening an account can only be done in person or via video call.
