OSIJEK: Prosecutors in the Croat city of Osijek have accuses veteran Real Madrid playmaker Luka Modric of false testimony in 2017.

The Hina news agency Hina has reported that similar accusations are also being laid against Lyon defender Dejan Lovren.

Modric is accused of having given false testimony on June 13, 2017 in a trial before the Osijek Municipal Court “despite the fact that the judge warned him that he had a duty to tell the truth” and that giving false testimony was penalised as a crime.

The original case concerned the trial of three senior officials from Dinamo Zagreb club and a tax official, accused of tax evasion and illegal appropriation of money in the transfers of Modric to Tottenham in 2008 and Lovren to Lyon in 2010.

Modric testified about the dates on which the annexes to the professional contracts that regulated the distribution of compensation for the transfer between him and his club Dinamo were signed.

According to the accusation, Modric testified “falsely” that he signed the annexes every time he extended the professional contract and that he signed them again after leaving the club, “although he knew that this does not correspond to the truth since he signed the aforementioned contract annexes when he had already left the initial club.”

At the end of the trial, the judges sentenced the four defendants to various terms, including six and a half years in prison for Zdravko Mamic, the former ceo of Dinamo, for having illegally appropriated €15.5m from the club.

The testimonies of Modric and Lovren would have favored Mamic , who fled to Bosnia-Herzegovina before the conviction, where he currently lives.

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