Former partner and president of Doyen Sports Investments, Nélio Lucas, called it “an excellent decision” for Doyen to have chosen Malta for its headquarters, as it was a European jurisdiction, which facilitated the closing of business under agreements to avoid double taxation. “Malta was a European Union country, it wasn’t Rwanda or Bangladesh,” said Nélio Lucas in the Rui Pinto trial.
In his testimony, the former partner (20%) of Doyen revealed that the owners of the company, the Arif family, through Malik Ali, even considered Dubai as the headquarters for Doyen, but the choice ended up being Malta. In court, Nélio Lucas said it was “a very normal thing” to open a company in Malta.
Nélio Lucas also explained that another Maltese company he was connected to, Vela Management, “did manage the activities on a daily basis”.
In her testimony, she noted that Doyen was a commercial company, not a fund, a difference also highlighted by her lawyer, Sofia Ribeiro Branco, but she ended up admitting that she intended to convert Doyen into an investment fund.
“It wasn’t a fund nor was it, but it could be in the future,” he said, admitting that in many contracts Doyen was in fact referred to as a fund, although legally it is not. “The press itself called us fund,” added Nélio Lucas, to which judge Margarida Alves commented that “the press can be guilty of many things, but the very clauses of the contracts referred to Doyen as a fund.”
