Former Denmark international footballer Allan Lund Nielsen has been ordered by Copenhagen City Court to pay 5,515,510 kroner in compensation to the Danish Tax Agency over assets held in a Panama-registered company. The ruling, delivered last week, stems from the 2016 Panama Papers leak.
DR Nyheder, which obtained the written judgment, reports that the court found the company Bight Inc. held assets of 18.7 million kroner. Those assets should have been taxed in Denmark, according to the ruling. Nielsen will appeal the judgment, his lawyer told DR.
The compensation carries process interest running from November 19, 2018, the date Skattestyrelsen filed suit. Ekstra Bladet, citing Ritzau, puts the accrued interest at roughly four million kroner. That would bring the total liability to about 9.5 million kroner.
The Panama structure
On paper, Bight Inc. was run by five Panamanian citizens, the court found. Each was involved in the management of between 6,843 and 8,877 companies, and the firm shared an address with the law firm Mossack Fonseca. Danish tax authorities described the five as straw men concealing Nielsen as the real owner.
The judgment cites emails from Nordea Luxembourg, where Nielsen was a client. In June 2006, a Danish bank employee wrote about buying Bight Inc. and arranging power of attorney for him. The court treated this as proof that he owned the company and that it existed to avoid Danish tax.
Nordea declined to comment to DR. The bank has previously said the Luxembourg unit closed in 2017, and that Skattestyrelsen has notified a claim against it over its Panama Papers role.
Skattestyrelsen first raised his taxable income for the 2006 tax year by 18,710,051 kroner in a January 2018 decision. Separately, Retten i Hillerød placed Bight Inc. into bankruptcy in Denmark in early 2022 and appointed Kammeradvokaten lawyer Boris Frederiksen. His final report, from October 2023, found no funds in the estate but assessed that Nielsen could be liable in damages.
The court concluded that Nielsen withdrew and transferred 2,836,678 kroner from the company account between 2007 and 2013. He moved to Dubai in July 2013. The court found it established that he had emptied the company by April 2016, when the Nordea account was closed.
Nielsen has denied the claims throughout, calling the compensation demand alleged and fictitious. BT notes he argues Skattestyrelsen has not documented that the 18.7 million kroner represented real assets. He also claimed the demand was time-barred, citing a June 2018 decision on the years 2007 to 2013.
The court rejected the limitation argument, finding he had acted in a way that incurred liability. Danish authorities bought data on Danes in the Panama Papers from a whistleblower in 2016 for 6.4 million kroner.
