Swede with ‘ties to organised crime’ loses €600k Cab case

● Money seized off email firm was from a ‘credit card scam’

ASwedish man alleged to have links to organised crime has failed in his bid to stop the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) from transferring more than €600,000 to the State.

The bureau seized the money more than a decade ago, claiming it was the proceeds of a credit card scam dating back to 2002.

However, Harry Zeman, a director of the Swedish company allegedly behind the scam, Routeback Media, took a legal challenge to prevent the funds being transferred to the State.

The Court of Appeal rejected his appeal in a judgment delivered on Friday, ending one of Cab’s longest-running and most-litigated cases.

Cab has claimed Zeman was known to have “ties to organised crime” and had convictions in Sweden for drug-dealing.

He had denied links to organised crime and claimed the funds were the proceeds of legitimate business.

The disputed funds date back to 2002, when Zeman’s company, Routeback Media, launched an internet sales business selling email accounts worldwide for $9.95 (€9.22).

The credit card transactions were processed by an Irish company, EuroConex. The company quickly became suspicious. It had expected to process 1,000 credit card transactions a year but was hit with 80,000 in a matter of days.

A large number of transactions were rejected by banks for reasons such as the card was stolen, the account number was invalid or it had insufficient funds.

Three American banks told EuroConex that “the transactions for the Routeback merchant number were all fraudulent”.

EuroConex terminated its contract with Routeback and reported the company to Swedish police and later to gardaí and the Revenue Commissioners.

The proceeds of Routeback’s 2002 email account sale — $657,710 — were seized by Cab as the proceeds of crime following a High Court case in 2011.

When Cab applied to transfer the money to the State in 2018, Zeman and Routeback again objected, with Zeman ultimately taking a case to the Court of Appeal.

In earlier legal hearings relating to the case, Cab claimed Zeman’s brother was found to have been in possession of electronic equipment “used to create fraudulent credit card numbers and that he had fled Sweden after this discovery”.

Cab produced a statement from a Swedish police officer who said Routeback had been investigated in Sweden in 2001 for similar suspect credit card transactions.

The Swedish officer concluded that “the primary person behind Routeback at the time was Kristian Zeman, a brother of Harry Zeman”.

Investigations by Swiss police “found that Kristian Zeman had €100,000 in a Swiss bank account and that when Kristian Zeman was informed that the Swiss authorities had been investigating him, he fled to Australia”.

Harry Zeman denied links to organised crime and said his drug convictions related to his personal drug use. While his brother did go to Australia, he was not fleeing and went there to attend university.

He said his brother has had fulltime employment in the courts of Sweden and has served as a law clerk and a judge in the administrative court of appeal in Stockholm and the administrative court of Uppsala, exhibiting documents as proof, according to the judgment.

In the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Donald Binchy dismissed the various legal arguments put forward by Harry Zeman and awarded costs against him.