Valencia adds another problem, but this time not on the playing fields, but on the property. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the owner, Peter Lim, for possible crimes of document falsification and money laundering. The former vice president of the team Miguel Zorío denounced the businessman on June 7 for possible irregularities with three companies.
The first of them is Meriton Holding, which belongs to Peter Lim. Zorío believes that the owner of Valencia allegedly diverted 23 million euros from the club’s coffers to his company. With these income, Lim would already recover the initial loan of 17.2 million euros that he made to Valencia and that he capitalized with shares.
The second is a Singapore-based company incorporated on August 10, 2016 by Peter Lim’s entity, according to the complaint. Zorío states that on June 30, 2017, the club’s Shareholders’ Meeting voted in favor of the closure of this entity and attached the official vote to the document, in addition to a document with the accounts for the years 2022 and 2023 where it appears that remains open and active. In addition, he commissioned a detective agency in Singapore to verify whether he was active. Lim argued that this partnership served to “carry out advertising and marketing campaigns.” The investigation determined that the people behind that company are Kim Koh (who promised to finish the construction of the New Mestalla, according to the former vice president) and Wong Heng Teck Andrew, the head of a real estate agency in Singapore. This, according to the complaint, is “specialized in hitting balls with bricks.”
The researchers concluded in the report that the building in which this company is located “houses companies off shore (entities registered in a country in which they do not carry out any economic activity and which are usually located in tax havens).” Also that the address where they say the Valencia branch in Singapore is located is permanently closed and is not occupied, but it does belong to Peter Lim. The former vice president asks that Lay Hoon, the visible face of the club in Spain, declare before the Prosecutor’s Office why she, together with Lim, set up a company in “a tax haven” and that he contribute their economic movements.
Zorío also includes in the document that, a week before formalizing the complaint, they left a note in his office informing him that Peter Lim was taking money from the club to take it to Hong Kong to pay the capitalization of the loans he had granted to Valencia and thus increase its participation in the company, taking power away from small shareholders. In that note there appeared a movement of 2.6 million euros to the entity Valencia CF Asia LTD, which was not included in the annual accounts for the years 2022 and 2023.
The third, CHZ Europe Trade, is a company in Barcelona. According to the complaint, it is a bazaar of Chinese products that has also had transactions with the club worth almost three million euros.
Two days after filing the lawsuit, the former vice president of Valencia expanded the case in relation to the alleged fiscal irregularities of the president of Valencia CF, Lay Hoon, and an alleged crime of prevarication by the Valencia City Council, according to eldiario.es. Zorío accuses them of “arranging the conditions of the new urban planning agreement for the new and old Mestalla with the developer who failed to comply with the previous strategic territorial action.” That is, Valencia CF.
Zorío also claims that Lim traded players above their market price. “Until now we have been able to demonstrate that in certain signings of the club, there was a brutal difference between the money that left Valencia CF and the money that reached the selling club (for example, the signing of Rodrigo, bought for 30 million plus 10 in variables to Benfica, and that only 13 million euros reached the Portuguese club, with Meriton Capital as an intermediary), according to the Lisbon Stock Exchange itself,” says the former vice president.
