Pay Up Pompey, Pompey Pay up

[EastStandBlue]

It never rains, it pours... Except in Portsmouth, where the football club seems to permanently be in the grips of a category 5 hurricane.

The south coast club are gripped in a relegation battle they seem destined to lose and the mystery surrounding their owner seems to deepen by the day. The news that HM Revenue & Customs have slapped them with a winding up order "shocked and surprised" the club, but not anybody else. Like Notts County in League Two, the promise of oil-fuelled millions has ran dry and they will now be used as an example of how not to do things.

The false dawns under the concession of Arab owners may be responsible for the current predicament Portsmouth find themselves in, but the true culprits lie closer to home. Alexandre Gaydamak bought the club from an exacerbated Milan Mandaric and quickly acted to supply Harry Redknapp with enough funds to appease the craftiest of crooked cockney's. Redknapp spent wisely on the likes of Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Sulley Muntari and Sol Campbell... but perhaps a little too brashly on footballers like John Utaka, who has never really found his feet in the Premier League.

Success for the club was found almost instantaneously. Under Redknapp, they won their first major trophy in decades by beating Cardiff to lift the FA Cup in 2008 and spent the next season pioneering throughout Europe. They even came five minutes from a famous win over AC Milan... Still, rumours were adrift that the money was running dry, Redknapp woke from his slumber and moved along to leech from another club and the tumultuous search for a new owner began.

The problem being, however, that the damage was already done. The fact that Portsmouth accumulated so much from the sale of players like Muntari, Crouch, Defoe and Johnson yet remain in a financially fragile state speaks volumes of the problems at the club. They have simply lived outside of their means for too long, paying the likes of John Utaka the inexcusable sum of £80,000 per week, and must now suffer the consequences.

Success is short lived without the foundations to sustain it. The top four have remained the top four for so long as they have the infrastructure to sustain such expenditure, Portsmouth, unfortunately, have no such stability at Fratton Park and now face an uncertain 2010.

 

[chapperzUK]

In the last two seasons they have gained over £65m in transfers out. The fact that Kranjcar only went for £2.5m must have meant that he was a high earner, which wouldn't be surprising as he was their best player. I can not believe that Utaka is on £80k per week!

 

[BrettieAngell]

The next Leeds IMO.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

The next Leeds IMO.

Could be.Hope not though.See we're not the only ones in HMRC's bad books!:)

guardian.co.uk Football Web News


Sacha Gaydamak casts doubt over Portsmouth owners• Former owner demands money owed by current regime
• Portsmouth will contest terms of HMRC winding-up order
Buzz up!
Digg it
Jamie Jackson The Guardian, Thursday 31 December 2009 Article history
The former Portsmouth owner Sacha Gaydamak says he is owed money by the current regime. Photograph: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images Europe


Sacha Gaydamak, the former owner of Portsmouth who says he is owed at least £28m by the club, has demanded that the current proprietor, Ali al-Faraj, tell him when he will be paid and has cast doubt over who is in control at Fratton Park.

Speaking to the Guardian last night the Franco-Russian businessman revealed he feels "frustrated" at the confusion on the south coast, and that he wishes to know the identity of the "ultimate beneficial owner" as he is finding it difficult to engage in dialogue with the correct parties in regard to recouping his money.

Gaydamak's decision to speak out for the first time came after the news that Portsmouth were served a winding up petition by HM Revenue & Customs on 23 December. While the club issued a statement disputing whether any order had been "formally served", HMRC confirmed that it had indeed delivered the petition. The court hearing is not expected until early February, giving the club breathing space to pay the estimated debt, which stands at around £10m, and if not paid could force Portsmouth into administration.

Regarding Portsmouth's chaotic state, which includes players failing to be paid twice this season, an ever-rising debt which stands at around £60m, plus on-field fortunes which have Avram Grant's team rooted to the bottom of the league, Gaydamak said: "I join in the frustration of the supporters, and I would like to know who the ultimate beneficial owner is, what plans they have for the future, and if I am to be paid."

Gaydamak claims the debt is due in two tranches, with the first instalment of £9m due to be paid at the end of next month. A further £19m is due in May 2012, while it is unclear when the disputed amount of £2.5m will be paid.

Gaydamak's confusion over the identity of the club's actual beneficial owner is reflected by Portsmouth fans and the Premier League. The governing body is closely monitoring the situation, and also placed a player registration embargo on the club more than two months ago for debts owed to other English clubs.

When Faraj purchased Portsmouth from Sulaiman al-Fahim the latter never actually met the Saudi businessman. He has also yet to visit the club and is represented by Mark Jacob, his solicitor and Portsmouth's executive director.

Faraj appears to have several advisers, many of whom are Israeli. Roni Mana, an Israeli property developer, and his countryman Yusef Yurum, a practising solicitor, are thought to be advisers, while Faraj's brother, Ahmed, who is London-based and has attended games, is a property developer. It is said the Faraj brothers and the group became involved with Portsmouth due to an interest in redeveloping Fratton Park.

The statement from the club regarding the HMRC petition read: "Portsmouth FC has not been formally served with a winding-up petition and is shocked and surprised this action has been taken in respect of VAT, PAYE and National Insurance contributions which either have been or are about to be paid, or are disputed.

"The club is disputing the VAT amount outstanding and has formally notified HMRC of this. We expect HMRC to withdraw their demands forthwith. Otherwise we anticipate a hearing in January 2010 during which we will request that the high court order HMRC to withdraw their demands.

"Since the takeover by Ali al-Faraj in October 2009 extreme efforts have been made to reach payment arrangements with HMRC to allow the owner time to deal with inherited debt. To date the new owner has injected a total of £9.7m new funds to HMRC – £5.7m paid and security to the value of £4m."

A Portsmouth spokesman said last night he had no comment to make over Gaydamak's assertions<

 

[Beefy]

I got this from a Pompey fan on another forum that I post at:

Alright, alright.

The theory is that Sasha Gaydamak is still indirectly in charge of the club (using it for money laundering) and is basically withdrawing the vast majority of income from player sales, TV revenue, gate receipts etc into his own accounts, whilst using loans to pay for day-to-day expenses, thus building up the debt. This will go on until the club inevitably enters administration and in most likelihood folds completely.

A few things to consider –

- Despite all the player sales over the past year or so (Diarra, Muntari, Johnson, Defoe, Crouch, Distin, Kranjcar, Mendes) bringing in around £80m in income, plus the Sky money, ticket sales and other revenues, which must total around £150m, there is still no sign that the debt situation has changed – we’re still struggling to pay basic expenses such as the player salaries, this despite now having one of the lowest wage bills in the league. Were our debts really that big to begin with? Unlikely.

- Pretty much every business Sasha Gaydamak has ever owned has gone into liquidation.

- Ali Al-Faraj is still a complete unknown. He was a supposed “billionaire”, yet no-one had ever heard of him, even in his homeland of Saudi Arabia. He is yet to turn up to any games (not even Man Utd at home, despite word going around that he would attend) which was originally put down to permit issues, yet his “brother” has attended some games. No-one is quite sure who he is or where he got his money from, and all that has been released of him is this one photo:

Is this man in the photo Ali Al-Faraj, or just some random Arab being used as a smokescreen for Gaydamak’s cash cow scheme? Is Ali Al-Faraj even a real person, or is he completely made-up? And if he isn’t a real person, how the **** did he pass the FA’s Fit and Proper Person Test?! Keep in mind that Al-Faraj reportedly didn’t spend a penny on buying the club; all he did was take over the clubs debts. In theory I could have done that – all I’d need to do is fool the FA into thinking that I had the financial clout required to run a football club. And as we all know, the FA are useless bunch of tossers anyway.

- Two men called Balram Chainrai and Levi Kushnir loaned us £15m in September to help with costs. These two men co-founded a company called Ameris Holdings, who sold 65% of shares to Sasha Gaydamak’s father Arcadi (who has an arrest warrant out for him in France for arms dealing during the Angolan civil war. He’s been sentenced to six years but is now hiding back in Russia as they have no extradition treaty with France) Anyway, Arcadi used to be owner of Beitar Jerusalem (until July this year) but ran into some problems with Israeli law and had his account frozen. His business partners Chainrai and Kushnir sued Arcadi for failing to buy the rest of the shares of their company Ameris Holdings as was apparently agreed, and were awarded £16m from Arcadi’s frozen accounts. They then lend Pompey £15m for apparently no reason at all…. seems like a good way of transferring cash from one frozen bank account to another active one, no?

- Another face currently hanging around the club is someone called Danny Azougy, who has been brought in as a financial advisor. He is an Israeli lawyer/accountant and multi-time convicted fraudster you used to work for, yep, Arcadi Gaydamak.

“Disgraced lawyer Daniel Azougy is controlling the club’s finances, despite a string of convictions for fraud dating back eight years. He was found guilty of FOUR counts of embezzling client funds in Israel in 2002. He was sentenced to five months in prison – but did not spend any time behind bars as he was allowed to do his time in community service instead. Azougy was also banned from practising law by the Israeli Bar Association for FOURTEEN YEARS. Then in March this year, Fratton Park’s new finance man was sentenced to two months’ community service and a year’s probation – and fined £25,000 – for a securities fraud resulting from a dodgy share transfer back in 1999.Azougy was found to have lied to the Israeli Stock Exchange bosses over the deal. He got off with a light sentence because the offence happened 10 years earlier.”

Azougy specialises in liquidation and was appointed by Arcadi to deal with the asset stripping of Beitar Jerusalem towards the end of his reign. And here he is again, no doubt appointed by the same person to do a similar job.

- Two other names, Roni Mana and Yoram Yosepov, have been linked as potential investors to the club. They denied it, but admitted on record that they are acting as “business advisors” to Ali Al-Faraj and claimed they persuaded him to appoint Avram Grant as manager. Type the name ‘Roni Mana’ into Google along with Gaydamak and you’ll see, unsurprisingly, they have quite a history of dealings too. The first result says Mana “has been the middleman in all of Gaydamak's recent business transactions”. It’s clear that the people being deployed by the club are Gaydamak’s people, not Al-Faraj’s, if he even exists.

- Where does Al-Fahim fit into this? Well, my theory is that he intended to buy the club back in May and had a serious backer lined up (probably Thaksin Shinawatra as reported) but that went down the pan. Once it became clear Al Fahim didn’t have anywhere near the required financial means on his own, and after he failed to attract other investors to pay off the remainder of Sasha’s demands, Sasha went with Plan B – Al-Faraj the mirage – and decided to rape the club for everything he could. He clearly doesn’t give a **** whether the club survives or goes bust, and why should he? Al-Fahim is left sat there as a non-executive chairman, owning 10% of a worthless company, with no money and no decision making authority like the useless fat prick that he is.


So there you have it. Clearly there’s a lot of dodgy stuff going on. I’m 100% sure the Gaydamak’s are still in charge, and as they have no invested interest in keeping the club afloat, I really can’t see a happy ending to it all. No investors are going to want to buy the club – not when you consider the current league placing, shocking infrastructure and (somehow still) massive level of debt. Now the winding up order has been set, the end seems to be nigh. The club is getting ****ed up the arse and I honestly reckon we’ll be out of business in the coming months. Possibly administration as early as next month. Wonder if the players will get paid tomorrow?

 

[EastStandBlue]

This is Portsmouth FC, not Harchester...

I think the long and short of it is that, when Alexandre Gaydemak sold the club he conveniently forgot to inform the new owners about the outstanding debt which equates to sizeable sum. Now, Ali Al-Faraj has bitten off more than he can chew and has his doubts about the life expectancy of the football club and will more than likely cut all ties.

 

[Beefy]

I don't agree with the money laundering theory as such but there's massive issues at the football club which I think go beyond someone biting off more than he can chew. The fact that the FA don't appear to even know who is in charge speaks volumes.

The numbers just don't seem to add up. When we looked like we were in big trouble you could understand the principle that expenditure exceeded income and had for a long time and there were no assets to sell to bridge that gap. Portsmouth have raised a huge amount of money in the recent past, have cut expenditure dramatically to the extent that they pretty much have a Championship squad playing in the Premier League, and yet if anything that debt appears to have increased.

It's also at the stage now where I'm not sure even Administration will help them. According to the Guardian story further up, Gaydamak claims to be owed more than £20m, plus £10m to HMRC, plenty of money owed to other Clubs hence the current transfer embargo. I don't see them getting a CVA even if they were to take Administration.