Mister 20 percent: For years, Vedran Pavlek took money from our skiers in addition to the federation’s money!

Apart from the fact that he extracted 30 million euros from the Croatian Ski Federation over 11 years, this was Pavlek’s second business model. As we are moreć announced, Uskok will likely expand the investigation into crime in the ski association because they found new evidence in Pavlek’s laptop that the money had been withdrawn for 25 years, but they will also expand the number of people who will be suspected. The former director of the Alpine national team is on the run from the Croatian judiciary and should be in a Kazakh prison, where he is awaiting extradition.

Although the blackmailing of skiers has been unofficially talked about before, journalist Marin Dešković he published in Jutarnji List last weekend the statements of the witnesses who were questioned, as well as the transcripts of secretly recorded conversations that confirm this. They published the testimony of Amir Ljuti, the father and coach of our extremely successful ski national team member Zrinka Ljuti.

Conflict of interest and blackmail

– Pavlek told me that his condition for Zrinka to perform for the national team is that we hire him as a manager and representative who will negotiate with sponsors on her behalf and for which he will receive a commission. It didn’t seem right to me and I thought it was Pavlek’s conflict of interest, which is what I told him, but he asserted that it was right and that he is being paid for his hard work because it is not right that he creates athletes, and then various managers pick the cream – Jutarnji reported Amir Ljuti’s testimony, which is for private sponsors, which he found himself, he had to sign a contract with Pavlek’s company and give up 20 percent. According to the same testimony, Pavlek did not pay the Ljuti all the money he needed, but for the past year, he owed about 200,000 euros to the sponsors.

Neither Angryć none of the others we contacted wanted to talk about these contracts either, and after testifying in Uskok they had to sign confidentiality statements.

However, we unofficially managed to get confirmation that Pavlek’s contracts were a long-standing established practice.

– It started with Janica and Ivica Kosteli, for whom he was the manager, and it continued with everyone afterwards. Some skiers in the world have managers who find them sponsors and charge for it. However, the problem here is that Pavlek was the director of the national team at the same time, so the word about the same conflict of interest. And those who didn’t like it, or didn’t want to, can’t even count on promotion – another interlocutor explains.

In the case of the Ljuti family. an additional problem was that they themselves found sponsors who were not even from Croatia. And when Zrinka was supposed to join the national team four years ago, they had to give 20 percent of the money even though Pavlek was not credited for finding them sponsors. We found out that Samuel Kolega and Filip Zubčić, ski national team members, had such contracts until the arrest and breaking of Pavlek’s network in spring.

It is even more incredible that none of them had any formal representation agreement with Pavlek’s company in Monaco – Pavlek Ski Management. Such a contract would define the distribution of money, sponsorship bonuses for winning places and commission. We can assume that Pavlek was aware of his conflict of interest, so he did not leave such a trace. Most of the sponsorships are held by the federation, but the skiers are entitled to money from those highlighted on the helmet, and the sponsors also provide them with equipment.

By giving Pavlek a power of attorney to represent them, the sponsors first paid the money to Pavlek’s company, and then he forwarded it. If the sponsor himself didn’t tell the skier how much was paid, they didn’t even know how much money went to Pavlek’s company before they got their share. However, for example Zubčić and Kolega didn’t have their own company or business, where the money sat, but they received money all the time in cash. In anger, the money went to the company’s account. Namely, as Uskok is moreć established, part of the extracted money, and apparently also part of the sponsorship money, was picked up by Pavlek and returned to Croatia in regular tours. One such shipment, of 116,000 euros, which was transferred from Italy by the spokesman Nenad Eror, was intercepted by the investigators and obtained evidence.

– Ever since last year, when nobody knew what was going on, Pavlek rarely stayed in Croatia, but the money kept coming. There were also the Winter Olympics, and after Eror fell and after the flow of money stopped, hardly anyone could get to Pavlek. Then the skiers complained that they didn’t get their money because they had an agreement with Pavlek. It turned out that they only had an agreement, not a contract, and that they were receiving cash all the time. The union’s employees also had contracts for lower amounts, and the rest was financed with that cash – says our interlocutor.

‘Solve it with Pavlek’

Although now everyone washes their hands of responsibility, some of our interlocutors tell us that it is Amir Ljuti who is angry. was the first to oppose such a practice and said so to Pavlek. As Pavlek squeezed him, he also informed some high-ranking people in the alliance to protect him. But he received the answer that “that’s the way it is” and that he should solve everything himself with Pavlek. It’s amazing that this model worked for 25 years. After the affair broke out, and before the arrests began, athletes founded their own companies and arranged for sponsors to pay them directly. However, some were not so lucky because, without knowing what they were talking about, some sponsors paid money to Pavlek’s company a few days before the arrest in the ski association.

The ski association is still led by Miho Glavić, who won the majority at the election assembly last week. After the affair, the association conducted a forensic analysis of the fake invoices that Pavlek used to extract money over the last ten years. It turned out that there were 226 fake invoices, and every month Pavlek, with the help of paid between 90,000 and 160,000 euros to the chief secretary and bookkeeper to a network of companies connected to them. The reputable auditing firm PwC has claimed for years that everything is fine with reports and spending. The association blamed them and the bank for such transactions going through. They also announced legal steps against those responsible.