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發表於 2006-9-1 14:23:32
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http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1862730,00.html
Eyebrows raised at deal shrouded in mystery
Paul Kelso
Friday September 1, 2006
The Guardian
West Ham's sensational capture of Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano is undoubtedly the biggest coup of this or any other transfer window, but it is not just in English pubs and Premiership grounds that the significance of the Argentinian pair's arrival will be debated.
Thanks to the complex structure of the deal and the mysterious ownership structure of Media Sports Investments (MSI), the investment vehicle that yesterday sold the players' registrations to West Ham, administrators in Britain and Europe will have raised eyebrows at the passing of a deal that in almost every sense is unusual.
Although the transfer lists in today's papers will baldly state that Tévez and Mascherano yesterday moved from Corinthians to West Ham, the reality of the deal is more complex and remains in part opaque. The players were contracted to and paid by the Sao Paulo club but they were at least half "owned" by MSI and its front man Kia Joorabchian, an Iranian-born, British-educated businessman.
MSI yesterday sold its share in the pair's registration to the Hammers because FA regulations prevent player registrations being owned by anyone other than a club. MSI has secured lucrative sell-on clauses, however, meaning West Ham will have to sell either player should they receive an offer in excess of €50m (£35m) per player or match the fee themselves, with the lion's share of the profit going to MSI. For celebrating West Ham fans the one cloud on the horizon may be that the pair will spend this season in the Premiership shop window before departing to more glamorous employers.
Joorabchian became familiar to an English football audience last year when he tabled a £90m offer to buy West Ham from the chairman Terence Brown. The offer was not accepted but relations between the two parties remained good enough for the deal of the season to be engineered almost out of the blue.
Welcome though the signings will be to Hammers fans who will now dream of Champions League football, Joorabchian is a controversial figure in Brazil, where he was investigated after buying Corinthians in 2004, in Russia where he developed links with the exiled media oligarch Boris Berezovsky, and in the corridors of the European governing body Uefa where allegations of claimed links to European clubs, including at least one from the Premiership, have come to the attention of the chief executive Lars Christer Olsson.
Joorabchian, 35, made his entrance into football in 2004 when he appeared in Sao Paulo as the frontman for MSI's takeover of Corinthians, which saw the company promise to pump $35m into the club over 10 years. Joorabchian presented Tévez as a $22m (£11.5m) "present" to the fans and the most high-profile player ever to swap Argentina for a Brazilian club. Within months, however, Joorabchian and MSI found themselves the subject of an investigation by the Brazilian Central Bank and the organised crime unit. The investigations threw up extravagant claims but no proof of any wrongdoing.
MSI is registered in London, with Joorabchian and a Nojan Bedroud of Maidenhead, Berkshire, listed as the sole directors. Joorabchian has been on compassionate leave from Corinthians for several months after the death of his father. The transfer of Tévez has also thrown up suggestions of indirect links between the businessman and Berezovsky.
Joorabchian acknowledges that the two men are friends but denies that the Russian is a source of MSI's cash. Joorabchian also denies ties between MSI and Roman Abramovich, who was linked with the company by the Spanish newspaper AS, its story fuelled by reported sightings of Abramovich's yacht in Buenos Aires shortly before the Tévez deal was announced.
It was these suggestions of links between club owners stretching around the world and across Europe that alerted European administrators to the activities of Joorabchian. Allegations made in the Dutch media were forwarded to Olsson, who forwarded his concerns to leading football administrators across the continent and members of the European Parliament. Olsson's warning shot was in part the catalyst for a review of European football governance sponsored by the sports minister Richard Caborn and carried out by a Portugese politician, Jose Luis Arnaud. The review called for EU law to be changed to allow football to be governed by different rules to the rest of business, specifically allowing the authorities to investigate collaboration between clubs. Currently Uefa can only intervene if an individual or club own more than 51% of two clubs. |
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發表於 2006-9-1 10:52:29
