The team’s residence is linked to “dirty” Russian money: “I don’t want to discuss.”

The Swedish men's national team always tours in January and before the pandemic they were several times in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. This sparked severe criticism due to lack of respect for human rights and freedom of expression.

This year, the national team is in Cyprus for the first time, being based on the west coast, a few miles north of Paphos.

There she lives and trains in a luxury hotel called Cap St Georges. A hotel that was built, according to the audit, with “dirty” Russian money.

In December, OCCRP, the international organization specializing in organized crime and corruption, published a review in which it revealed the luxury Cypriot hotel, in which we can read that it obtained its first financing from companies said to have links to a high-level institution. -Personal deal with tax crimes and fraud in Russia.

According to the audit, Dmitry Klyuev was one of the managers who invested in the plant in Cyprus. The US Department of Justice has classified him as a person involved in organized crime and large-scale tax evasion.

OCCRP also states that one of the companies behind the resort was partly owned by Russian businessman Igor Sagiryan, whose Panamanian company received $2 million from companies owned by Klyuev.

Dmitry Klyuev has been in the spotlight several times and was called the leader of the Russian mafia. Among other things, the English newspaper The Telegraph reported that he had links to millions of pounds that the Kremlin laundered across the UK, in a “spending orgy” on yachts, private jets and even boarding school fees.

On paper, the resort is owned by a Cypriot businessman named George Ioannou, but in reality several companies are said to be involved, many of them so-called “offshore companies” in tax havens, according to the OCCRP report.

Evidence of this can be found in the so-called Magnitsky affair, a high-profile tax fraud scandal in Russia, named after whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison after exposing a $230 million fraud, in which Klyuev was allegedly the boss she has. Organized crime syndicate.

OCCRP report reveals a link between the Cap St Georges hotel and the Magnitsky case.

The first investors in luxury villas in Cap St. Georges were allegedly linked to a notorious Russian tax scam, according to OCCRP.

The alleged leader of the criminal group behind the tax fraud, Dmitry Klyuev, is said to have bought a villa on Cap St George and appears to have been a partner in an investment company linked to the resort. Klyuev, who was sanctioned by the US government in 2014 for his role in the Magnitsky plot, reportedly retained ownership until 2019.

In 2015, Alpha Arch's Cap St Georges subsidiary transferred a significant sum of €16 million to Ioannou-owned companies. Since then, the resort has evolved into a sprawling complex of 200 private villas, a hotel with more than 202 rooms and an associated wastewater treatment plant, as well as a football pitch. Therefore, it is the place where the Swedish national team lives and trains.

Over the years, SvFF has hired German agency One Two Play, which helped find places to live and train during the January tour. This was also done this year.

When Fotbollskanalen reaches out to national team manager Stefan Pettersson and asks him what he thinks about the national team staying in a hotel that has been rewritten because it was financed by companies said to have links to a highly publicized deal involving tax crimes and fraud in Russia – he answers:

– There was nothing we knew. “I know there have been some articles about it,” he says.

– But I did not interfere in it. We'll have to review it when we get home with odds and other things. There are many things in the world that you do not know. But we'll have to look into this when we get home. We can't keep doing this now. Now we are here. We have to go over routines and everything, just like we always do.

Was One Two Play the company that found this accommodation and helped you?
– Yes, as they did for many years.

After all the criticism you received when you were in Qatar, do you have to do proper research so that this kind of thing doesn't happen?
– no. I think this way: I don't want to discuss this matter here and now. We can take this when we get home. Now we want to finish this.

The hotel was built near a nature reserve and the nature is considered sensitive, and activist groups have filed a complaint with the European Union Commission.

In a “warning letter” from the European Commission in 2019, Cyprus was accused of not conducting an “adequate assessment” of Cape St George.

According to Occrp, between 2016 and 2022, Ioannou made at least €170,000 in political donations to all parties in the Cypriot parliament except the Green Party, which has criticized Cap St. George.

Football Channel is looking for One Two Play.