Liverpool's Dejan Lovren Faces Croatian Investigation Over False Testimony Allegations

Croatian prosecutors have opened an investigation on Liverpool and Croatia defender Dejan Lovren for suspicion of providing false information at a court testimony in June 2017.

The court case was opened in Summer 2017 regarding the executive vice president of FC Dinamo Zagreb Zdravko Mamic mishandling millions in transfer fees from the transfers of Luka Modric and Dejan Lovren to Tottenham Hotspur and Lyon respectively.

The case was a complicated one, though at he heart of it, Mamic and three other co-defendants were accused of embezzlement and damaging Dinamo to the cost of £13m and the state to the cost of around £1.5m in unpaid taxes.

Michael Steele/GettyImages

According to reports in Croatia, an annex was signed as part of a contract that entitled Lovren to 50% of the compensation fee of his transfer from Zagreb to Lyon in 2010.

As part of his testimony, Lovren claimed the annex was inserted before he completed his transfer to Lyon. However, prosecutors have suggested, based on evidence, that the annex was backdated, having being signed after his transfer to Ligue 1.

Lovren initally gave comments to the Croatian State Prosecutor's Office for the Suppression of Organized Crime and Corruption (USKOK) during an independent investigation and then had to re-testify once the issue had been taken to court.

[youtube:https://youtu.be/dssEqnkGWq4]

However, Lovren is reported to have changed his report since giving comments to USKOK in order to protect the defendant.

In response to being questioned about the difference in his statements Lovren told the court: "My brain stopped because my daughter was having an operation."

Also accused of providing false information in the testimony is compatriot and Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric and his mother-in-law, Vesna Juraic who used to be head of accounting at Dinamo.

When questioned on the matter, both Liverpool football club and Dejan Lovren's agent declined to make a statement of the defender's current situation.