Convicted financier linked to €200m Vantaa arena project

By admin On Jun 24, 2025

If the Kivistö project is realised, Vantaa will have the largest indoor event arena in Finland. This visualisation is from a few years ago. Photo: Skoot Architects Ltd

A businessman convicted of serious financial crimes was involved in arranging funding for the planned Arena 3.3 project in Vantaa’s Kivistö district.

The venue is expected to seat over 20,000 people and include a hotel, restaurants, and a parking facility. If completed, it would become the largest indoor arena in Finland. The project’s estimated cost is €200 million.

According to an investigation by Yle, Jukka Nyman, a real estate entrepreneur, helped organise financing during a critical planning phase. In 2024, Nyman was convicted by the Turku Court of Appeal for aggravated accounting offences. He has previous convictions and was a suspect in a major youth foundation fraud investigation, though not charged.

Nyman represented Paaryt Oy, which owned up to 40 percent of the arena’s development company, Arena 3.3 Oy, between late 2023 and January 2025. During that time, the project gained momentum and moved forward in Vantaa’s municipal planning.

Arena 3.3 Oy is owned by My Luck Oy, whose stakeholders include Jouko Harjunpää, former FC Honka owner, and Pepe Perkiö, a local politician. Other investors include Peter Immonen, a media executive and portfolio manager.

Nyman told Yle he had exited the project. He said the ownership arrangement was based on a conditional investor agreement that failed, and the Paaryt Oy stake was dissolved.

Paaryt Oy is legally owned not by Nyman but by an Estonian man operating a real estate company. Nyman did not respond to questions about the man’s identity or role. Harjunpää and Perkiö said they had never met him and he had no involvement in the project.

Documents from 2018 show Finnish enforcement officials suspected Nyman of hiding assets through Estonian intermediaries. At the time, he owed several hundred thousand euros. He now has around €30,000 in enforcement debt.

The Estonian man involved in the 2018 case now chairs a real estate firm whose owner is listed as a stakeholder in Arena 3.3.

Despite public attention, project leaders have not revealed current that city officials were not informed of the funder’s identity during their meeting.

Perkiö explained the omission by citing confidentiality. He said some board members had potential conflicts of interest, which limited information sharing. Vantaa’s city lawyer Sari-Anna Pennanen said she was unaware of any disqualification issues.

Perkiö declined to disclose the identity of the backer but said the agreement is with a European Union-based entity. The funding itself comes from outside the EU. He stated that the financier is not based in a country on regulatory blacklists and that background checks have been conducted.

Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi