A plea deal brings a suspended sentence after a luxury property transaction spiraled into a multimillion-dollar fraud case.
Woman sentenced for $3.3 million fraud in the sale of Barcelona star’s house
A provincial court in Spain’s Balearic Islands has sentenced a woman to two years in prison after she admitted misappropriating more than $3.3 million from the sale of a Mallorca property to FC Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski.
The trial had been scheduled for Tuesday morning, but the defendant acknowledged the facts before proceedings began, allowing the parties to reach a plea agreement.
The Lewandowski house buy misappropriation
Under the ruling, she was handed a two-year prison sentence, fined about $1,560 and ordered to pay $1.75 million in compensation to the partners of the affected company, having been found guilty of misappropriation and breach of fiduciary duty.
The court agreed to suspend the prison term on the condition that she does not reoffend and fulfills her civil liability payments, given that she has no prior criminal record and the sentence does not exceed two years.
The judgment is final after all parties announced they would not appeal, according to the High Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands.
According to the prosecutor’s indictment, the events date back to June 2021. Acting as sole director of a company, the defendant formalized the sale of a home located in the Nova Santa Ponsa development – owned by the company – to Lewandowski.
The Polish forward, through his wife, issued a check for $3.8 million to the company at the time the deed was signed. The defendant then deposited the check into a bank account she had opened in the company’s name just days earlier. She held a 25 percent stake in the firm.
In the weeks that followed, she carried out multiple bank transactions, transferring $3.4 million to her personal account without any justification.
By the time she ceased to be the company’s sole director, the balance remaining in the account stood at $444,000.
The sale of the property was carried out without the knowledge of the other shareholders, who were not convened to the mandatory general meeting required under Spain’s corporate law.
According to the ruling, two of those partners, who together held 50 percent of the company’s shares and will receive the multimillion-dollar compensation, were unaware of the bank account opened by the convicted woman and did not consent to it.
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