Football
Glenn Price, Liverpool correspondent 6y

Liverpool's Dejan Lovren faces perjury probe in Croatia - reports

Croatian prosecutors have opened an investigation on Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren for suspicion of providing false testimony, according to reports in Croatia.

It is part of the trial for former Dinamo Zagreb director Zdravko Mamic, who has been charged with embezzlement and tax fraud.

The reports say that an annex was signed in a contract that entitled Lovren to 50 percent of the compensation of his transfer from Dinamo Zagreb to French side Lyon in 2010.

As part of his testimony, Lovren claimed the annex was inserted before his transfer to Lyon, but prosecutors have alleged, based on evidence, that the annex was signed after the defender's move and then backdated.

Lovren first gave statements to the Croatian State Prosecutor's Office for the Suppression of Organized Crime and Corruption (USKOK) during an investigation and then had to testify again in the court once charges against Mamic were raised.

Lovren is reported to have changed his statement he gave to USKOK from one that damaged Mamic to one that benefited the 58-year-old in the court.

Explaining the difference in his statements to USKOK and to the court, Lovren told the court: "My brain stopped because my daughter was having an operation."

At the beginning of September, during three and a half hours of testimony at the Osijek County Court, Lovren said he "did not remember" answers to numerous questions.

In June, it was revealed Real Madrid's Luka Modric is also under investigation for allegedly giving a false statement to a court about his 2008 move from Dinamo to Tottenham Hotspur as part of the same trial.

Modric's mother-in-law, Vesna Juraic, who was head of accounting at Dinamo and arranged the midfielder's bookkeeping at the time, is also suspected of giving false testimony.

Liverpool declined to comment, while Lovren's agent did not respond to a request for comment.

Aleksandar Holiga contributed to this report forĀ ESPN FC.

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