Al Jezeera’s Investigation Into Football Club Owners Is Just The Beginning
Al Jezeera news does some absolutely phenomenal sports-related investigations and documentaries. They did one about steroids in sports that showed some of the players involved in Lance Armstrong’s network, which actually ended up implicating Peyton Manning.
Their latest piece is about a trust fund manager named Christopher Samuelson. Samuelson also acts as a fixer for foreign billionaires of varying moral leanings, who want to own English football clubs. In 2018 brokered the sales of both, Aston Villa and Reading FC.
Christopher Samuleson, out of his own mouth, describes how he purchased Reading FC on behalf of a family of Russian oligarchs named the Zingarevich family.
He was also involved in the leaked story about a Russian oligarch who wanted to buy Everton FC and as a result the sale of the club never happened.
What Al Jezeera’s investigation exposes is that there are no checks and balances when it comes to who is buying a stake or even majority control, of an English football club. There is no way to verify how these people are making their money and therefore it is a great way to launder money.
Everyone from Russian oligarchs, dictators, oil barrons, tax evaders, convicted criminals and potentially even organized crime figures.
The English Football League which governs all of club football in England, states that a person with a criminal record or conviction, cannot own a stake in a football club but Samuelson describes the various tricks he uses to get around this.
From the way Samuelson describes his techniques in the investigative piece above, he is able to hide the identity of the prospective owners from the English Football league. Everything from hiding him as a shareholder via creating 20 or more companies and nominating front men, who will pose as buyers on the real buyer’s behalf.
The doccie details Chris speaking on his own accord about being able to get fake passports and taking advantage of the legislation of a country like Cyprus, where a mere 3 million pound investment into any business, buys you a Cyprian passport and identity. He goes in to detail about how hiring a former policemen turned security expert, who can do everything from tapping phones, to finding out how a specific story was leaked to the press, to finding a competitor’s dirty laundry to be used to his patron’s benefit.
The security expert is a man named, Keith Hunter, speaks on how he tracked down the source of the leak of the sale of Everton FC. He says that he found that 2 board members at the club had leaked the story.
Many football clubs are mentioned and are case studies for how these guys have been able to do this, but the guy that has probably dragged his club’s name through the mud is Derby County FC owner, Mell Norris. He makes an appearance in this documentary in which he encourages the undercover investigators to invest in his club.
Much of what Christopher Samuelson does isn’t illegal or even a violation of the English Football League’s rules, but it definitely breaks the spirit of the rules and he’s made himself very wealthy doing it.
The scary thing is that, at no point, does Samuelson ever question how the men in question made their money, or what crimes they were convicted for. This is treated as a mere formality, and Samuelson even utters the phrase, “I live in the real world”, when these moral queries and questions are first brought up.
Scary stuff.
The most fascinating things that happens in the world of sports, seldom ever occur on the field.
