By: Luka Perš
We are revealing how Aleksander Čeferin got the position of President of the Football Association of Slovenia in 2011. The main role in this whole matter was played by the then-presidenf of KMN Lesna Industrija Litija (now Football Club Litija), Samantha Tina Lovše, and the management board of the indoor football club that has won the most trophies in Slovenia. However, as the football experts have told us, Samantha Tina Lovše is the sister of the much better-known Helena Lovše, who is Tomaž Vesel’s close colleague and the spokeswoman for the Court of Audit. Tomaž Vesel and Aleksander Čeferin were teammates in the Football Club Ljubljana Lawyers. In this article, we will reveal, among other things, that Aleksander Čeferin never even held a position on the executive board of the Football Club Olimpija. The fact that Čeferin performed three functions in three different football teams at the same time is unbelievable and seems very unusual at first glance. But this story is not new. It was first made public in 2016, with Čeferin’s candidacy for the position of UEFA President, by the Norwegian football investigative magazine Josimar and Carlos Gunnera. In 2017, it was also partially presented in Slovenian media, namely, Topnews and VV Faktor. Samantha Tina Lovše told Josimar in 2016 that Čeferin was an active member of the club, but he was never a member of the management board of the futsal club Litija.
In 2011, influential individuals of the Slovenian football scene actively tried to persuade Aleksander Čeferin to decide to run for the position of President of the Football Association of Slovenia. One of the conditions for candidacy for President or Vice-President of the Football Association of Slovenia (Nogometna Zveza Slovenije – hereinafter referred to as NZS), is that the candidate must submit a statement and evidence that he has been active in football for at least three years and that he has not been convicted of a crime. But this posed a serious and great problem for Čeferin in his quest to try and take the position of President of the NZS, and later, President of UEFA. As we will reveal in this article, his official work experience as a football official is highly questionable.
The official website of the Football Association of Slovenia states that Aleksander Čeferin was a permanent associate of the Management Board of the futsal club Litija, a member of the Executive Board of FC Ljubljana Lawyers, and a member of the Executive Board of FC Olimpija Ljubljana. He held most of these positions between 2005 and 2011. Unfortunately, all of the presented data is based on very vague facts. In the cases of Olimpija and Ljubljana Lawyers, we can say with great certainty and proven facts, that Čeferin simply maid up the aforementioned period of his work in Olimpija and Ljubljana Lawyers.
What did Aleksander Čeferin promise the then-President of the Futsal Club Litija, Samantha Tina Lovše?
In the Slovenian public, Aleksander Čeferin gives the impression of an individual who abides by the laws and rules. The mainstream media like him very much, and he is considered to be one of the central favourites of the left-wing’s economic, political and sports elites. Just remember how the mainstream Slovenian media outlets presented the news that Aleksander Čeferin, through his influential friend and Alibaba owner Jack Maa, arranged the transport of emergency medical equipment for Slovenia.
The story of this article was first presented to the Slovenian public in 2017, when it was partially covered by Topnews and VV Faktor. One of the people who were most insistent in trying to convince Čeferin to become a candidate for the position of President of NZS is said to be the owner of a sports shop and former FC Litija football player Milan Smolnikar, an old acquaintance from the Depala vas affair. He has a sports shop in the very hall where Litija plays. In the past, Smolnikar also purchased the equipment for FC Litija. The name of his sports shop is Patrick. He is also the owner of the Kelma sports shop, opposite the Tivoli Hall in Ljubljana. He is mainly engaged in the sale of Patrick sports equipment.
In his inner circle, the hesitant Čeferin quickly agreed to the candidacy, when it was mentioned to him that in Germany, the position of President of the German Football Association is the second most important position, right after the chancellor. However, there was one unfortunate problem: Aleksander Čeferin did not meet the key condition for the candidacy, that is, at least three years of activity in football.
His close friends and acquaintances from Litija quickly joined forces and began preparing the ground for the takeover of power at the NZS. The solution was offered in the futsal club Litija, which was then led by Samantha Tina Lovše. The problem with Čeferin not meeting the necessary conditions was solved by “replacing” the minutes of the club’s board of directors in Litija, for the period, noted on the official website of the NZS. In these minutes, Čeferin was suddenly introduced as a “representative of the club’s sponsors” in the management board of the futsal club Litija.
If this really happened, it seems very strange the Litija Administrative Unit agreed to it. The question arises as to whether the official, responsible for the associations at the Litija Administrative Unit, was really willing to risk his professional career and criminal liability just so that Čeferin could fulfil another of his wishes. It is exactly the events in the Football Club Litija that open serious doubts about whether Tomaž Vesel really got his position at FIFA only because of his professionalism. And we should also remember the fact that journalist Bojan Požar shared a picture of Helena Lovše on his social media, in which she is sitting in a VIP box at one of the World Cup matches in Russia in 2018. In 2017, Samantha Tina Lovše became the President of the Futsal Commission.
This is one of the most influential positions in the field of indoor football in Slovenia. You can probably figure out for yourself, whether Aleksander Čeferin had anything to do with it, as a way to return the favour. But the story became even more interesting when we learned that Helena Lovše was married to Tone Vrhovec, and her sister Irena Lovše is married to Andrej Vrhovec, the current sports director of the Litija football club. In the hall where FC Litija plays, the company Fizio plus also has its headquarters, the director of which was Samantha Tina Lovše, and its owner was her mother, Jadranka Lovše. The company was sold to Alenka Savšek in 2013. Since 2017, Samantha Tina Lovše has been the director of the Zagorje Sports Association. The decision to help Čeferin to the throne at the NZS and consequently, at UEFA, certainly paid off for Samantha Lovše, as she also became an international delegate for futsal at UEFA.
However, the Norwegian magazine Josimar raised some doubts about Čeferin’s past actions before the election for the President of UEFA in 2016. Josimar is a magazine, specializing in revealing irregularities in the most important sport in the world. At the time, they wrote a series of articles, regarding Čeferin and his hinterland in international football. Thus, in an article entitled The Curious Case of Čeferin’s CV, Čeferin was asked about the unpleasant matters about which he did not want to hear a word. At the time, the Slovenian media, including the Delo newspaper, wrote that the Norwegians were playing a dirty game against Čeferin.
Rok Čeferin, Aleksander Čeferin’s brother and the current judge at the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia was also mentioned in the story about the irregularities.
We found another very interesting article by Carlos Gunnera online, titled Aleksander Čeferin, full of Lies? Gunnera played around a bit on the World Wide Web and came up with some interesting findings. In the article, Gunnera proved that in the 2010 picture, Čeferin was not in the picture of the management staff. He was also not mentioned anywhere, not even with a word. The author of the article also revealed that Samantha Tina Lovše was also the vice-president of the futsal club Ljubljana in 2014.
On the web pages where we searched for old news, in order to find information about the current UEFA President being active as a permanent associate of the board of directors of FC Litija, we found nothing of the sorts. And Samantha Tina Lovše even told the Josimar magazine that Čeferin was an active member of the club, but that he was never a member of the board of directors. The principled and ethical Norwegians therefore wondered how it is possible that the Football Association of Slovenia allowed this in 2011.
Aleksander Čeferin was not a member of the executive board of FC Olimpija Ljubljana in the period between 2006 to 2011, unlike what is written on the official web page of the NZS!
The current President of the strongest sports institution in the world, UEFA, was willing to do just about anything to achieve his goal, as we have already proved in the example from Litija. The NZS website states, among other things, that Aleksander Čeferin was on the executive board of FC Olimpija Ljubljana from 2006 to 2011.
However, this is yet another of Čeferin’s false facts. What’s more, we received some exclusive information from one of the unnamed members of the Olimpija executive board, when Izet Rastoder took over the management of the club. The well-known Slovenian merchant of southern fruit took over Olimpija in 2008 when Olimpija played in the third Slovenian league. The unnamed then-member of the executive board of Olimpija admitted that Aleksander Čeferin held the so-called function of adviser, but without an official title. When asked about the official website of the NZS, which states that Čeferin was a member of the executive board of FC Olimpija from 2006 to 2011, he said that this information is not true.
We also found confirmation of this online, as we found a message from the executive board of FC Olimpija, dated the 24th of August 2010. Another source also contacted us, claiming that Čeferin had been a member of the executive board of Olimpija for only three months. The message, in which the executive board accepted the resignations of the sports director Simon Sešlar and dragon coach Safet Hadžić, confirms this. “The executive board of the club, which includes Grega Čenčič, Gorazd Čuk and Franci Zavrl, in addition to president Izet Rastoder, will present the new coach of the team shortly,” the message reads.
In his article, Gunner revealed another case of interesting manipulation of the data of the Ljubljana first league club, in favour of Čeferin. Gunner found the FC Olimpija’s unofficial fan website. On this website, he noticed that the data was being changed very interestingly. He once again used an online tool to take a look at all the past interventions on the site. Thus, he provided four screenshots that had been taken between November 2010 and May 2012. Aleksander Čeferin only appeared as the candidate for President of the NZS at the end of 2010. It is clear from the picture that Aleksander Čeferin was not yet registered as a member of the executive board of Olimpija in November 2010.
Aleksander Čeferin played for Ljubljana Lawyers with Tomaž Vesel, but not under the auspices of the NZS or the Futsal Association!
As the third reference, Čeferin mentioned his work at FC Ljubljana Lawyers. The President of the Court of Audit, Tomaž Vesel, also played in this football club. The information about Aleksander Čeferin and Tomaž Vesel being teammates was revealed in the article titled Kuwait Conspiracy 2.0, by the Norwegian investigative journalist in the field of global sports, Andreas Selliaas. You can read on Ajpes that the club consisted of lawyers, judges and attorneys, employed in the economy and in state institutions.
The club was founded on the 25th of November 2005. Peter Grum was elected President, and in addition to him, Ermin Topuz, Aleksander Čeferin, Luka Divjak and Siniša Mitrovič also became members of the executive board; the treasurer of the club is Janez Pejovnik. But if Čeferin wanted to prove his activity in football with this, he made a mistake. Despite the fact that the club wrote that you can find the official results on its website, this is actually not possible, because the site is no longer working. On the UEFA website, we can also see that Siniša Mitrovič is also a member of one of the committees at UEFA. In addition to Mitrovič, Petra Stanonik Bošnjak, Luka Steiner, David McDowell, Vlado Šajn, Rudi Zavrl, Martin Koželj, Saša Zagorc and Tomaž Ranc – all from Slovenia – are also members of various UEFA commissions and committees.
While searching the web, we discovered that this was a team that played in the so-called legal football league, under the auspices of IUS sport. These were actually recreational tournaments that were not played under the auspices of the Futsal Association Ljubljana or the NZS. However, that is one of the essential conditions for a person to be able to run for the position of President or Vice-President of the Football Association of Slovenia. Josimar’s journalists found a photo of Čeferin’s team at the tournament in Alicante, Spain. And Tomaž Vesel admitted that he played for this team with Čeferin. We can add that Čeferin was a really great scorer. He scored as many as 70 goals in 110 appearances. But he scored all of these goals in a private league that did not compete under the auspices of the Futsal Association Ljubljana or the NZS. Therefore, even in the case of FC Ljubljana Lawyers, he misled both the Slovenian and international sports public. With this example, we proved another one of Čeferin’s lies.
Aleksander Čeferin put the NZS in the red: Five million euros that were irrationally spent in the construction of the Brdo National Football Centre
The biggest scandal in which Aleksander Čeferin was definitely involved, and for which he bears all the responsibility, is the construction of the Brdo National Football Centre. Čeferin has proven to be a pragmatist many times in his long career. Despite defending many infamous and suspicious people, such as Zoran Jankovič, as their lawyer, he has never been involved in major scandals. However, his dark stain is said to be the construction of the Brdo National Football Centre.
In the past, Čeferin was exposed by his predecessor, Ivan Simič. He wrote an extensive article for the Portalplus.si web portal, in which he presented all the numbers. In his article, Simič stated that during his presidency, they wanted to build an office building in Ljubljana and set up some football fields in Brdo.
The entire project was set in a financial framework of between four and five million euros. But after the coup against Simič and his consequent resignation, the premises of the Football Association of Slovenia were occupied by Čeferin and his team. Tomaž Vesel was also among them. Thus, the cost of the project rose from the planned five million, up to ten million euros. Simič even made an additional argument, saying that the entire process of construction was non-transparent because the Football Association of Slovenia was paying the state 88 thousand euros in annual compensation for the building rights. Thus, the Football Association of Slovenia will have to pay as much as 4.4 million euros in the next 50 years, but even then, it will still not own the land.
Ivan Simič led the association when the Slovenian national football team qualified for the World Cup for the second time, which took place in the Republic of South Africa in 2010. As Simič points out, the smaller associations in particular, such as Slovenia’s, depend on the ranking of their national team in major competitions. But since Simič’s departure, Slovenia has not qualified for any major competitions. Thus, in the last year of Čeferin managing the Football Association of Slovenia, in 2016, they had 6,012,500 euros of received loans (long-term and short-term liabilities).
In addition, the Football Association had 2.2 million euros in loans from operating liabilities, which, according to Simič, amounted to 8.2 million euros in liabilities, or 374,319 euros more than in 2015. Simič also pointed out that during the period of Čeferin’s management, the association was making irrational moves. It was Vesel in the role of the President of the Court of Audit who allowed the cover-ups and made it possible for the scandalous project for the construction of the National Football Centre Brdo to be swept under the rug.
In his role of President of the Court of Audit, Tomaž Vesel should be monitoring the NZS and their use of the received public funds. Since 2003, they have received more than 11 million euros of taxpayers’ money!
The official website of the Court of Audit states that it is an independent state body that controls the spending of public money. It monitors all the institutions that receive public money and the European funds in Slovenia. During Čeferin’s presidency, Tomaž Vesel held the position of deputy head of the Youth Commission at the Football Association of Slovenia, for the period between 2015 and 2019. According to the web application Erar, the Football Association of Slovenia has received more than eleven million euros since 2003. Aleksander Čeferin held the position of President of the NZS from the 17th of February 2011, to the 8th of October 2016. During this time, the NZS received 3,949,884.78 euros of taxpayers’ money.
In the article titled The Kuwait Conspiracy 2.0, the Norwegian journalist Selliaas described an interesting event that happened while he was on a flight from Zurich to Ljubljana. In the airplane, he was able to see for himself that Čeferin and Vesel are very good friends, as they happily chatted throughout the flight. At the time, they both already held the positions at UEFA and FIFA. However, the newly revealed facts, which show that Vesel, as the President of the Court of Audit, turned a blind eye to the possible irregularities that happened when Čeferin still managed the association, show Vesel’s position at FIFA and the attendance of Vesel’s spokeswoman Helena Lovše, at the World Cup matches, in a completely different light.