We were recently in discussions with a soon-to-be-launched body that
will focus on illicit money flows and money laundering in relation to
the football industry.
Such tax avoidance and evasion covers the
betting markets, the transfer markets as well as non-fit and non-proper
club ownership structures.
Our part in this project related to the betting markets.
So,
as a piece of research, we decided to list all of the global betting
territories and to link these locations with both club ownership loci
and offshore financial centres (particularly looking at preferred routes
of corruption).
With the mainstream media suddenly
deciding to conclude that the vast majority of global banks are involved
in tax avoidance via illicit money flows in a systemic failure of late
capitalism, the time is ripe for addressing parallel tax issues in
football.
From the shenanigans at the late Glasgow
Rangers (who went into administration three years ago today - Happy
Administration Day!) to the Leicester City manager, Nigel Pearson,
poking Leicester City 'legend' Gary Lineker regarding his tax affairs to
the 'mistake' by the HMRC which led to improperly prepared paperwork
allowing Harry Redknapp off tax evasion charges, the zeitgeist of public
perception of football corruption is changing.
The
interesting aspect of the research undertaken is the robust linkage
between club ownership locations, offshore financial centres, offshore
bookmaking locations and a transglobal map of primary mafiosi locations.
The interplay between these four power loci is fascinating and very revealing.
Take AC Parma.
Having fallen from historical heights due to the Parmalat Scandal, the club were serially mismanaged under stewardship of Tommaso Ghirardi and director general Pietro Leonardi resulting in the takeover in 2014 by an Albanian businessmen - Rezart Taçi (CEO of Taçi Oil) fronting for a Cypriot-Russian group.
Under Ghirardi's watch, the
Italian club had been thrown out of this year's UEFA Cup after having been
found guilty of paying players at other clubs to perform appropriately.
There
has been an array of very vivid matchfixing events at the club
throughout this season culminating in the farcical fix between Parma and
Chievo on Wednesday last.
And the money traded on these events
surfaces in some rather interesting locations far from Italy -
Gibraltar, Thailand, Russia, Philippines and Malta.
In
December 2014, the club were docked a point for non-payment of wages
and with the club about to be punished again for further non-payment, Taçi was discarded and the club brought in Ermir Kodra as president on January
23rd 2015 - Kodra worked at BKT Bank of Tirana and was director of
marketing at the ARMO, the largest oil refinery in Albania.
He
lasted just 17 days being replaced last Monday by Giampietro Manenti
who has vowed to pay the wages and clean up the operation.
The fact that the Parma/Chievo fix occurred two days into Manenti's regime does not bode well.
Albanian
mafia have been actively distorting outcomes in the Austrian Bundesliga
over the last 12 months while Cyprus is a prime location for Russian
money laundering and related matchfixing (particularly involving Cypriot
clubs and those from the former Soviet diaspora). The threats of violence and actual violence with regard to referees has become endemic with the most recent issue seeing a bomb left outside home of the mother of referee Thomas Mouskoss.
This
season saw a whole array of questionable matchfixing events in the
Qualifying Phases of both the Champions League and the UEFA Cup related
to this Russia-Cyprus axis.
AEL Limassol v Zenit St Petersburg,
Budocnost Podgorica v Omonia Nicosia, Metalurg Skopje v Omonia Nicosia,
Dinamo Moscow v Omonia Nicosia and Apollon Nicosia v Lokomotiv Moscow.
Of
course, a question that needs to be asked is how so many Russian
diaspora v Cypriot matches could 'randomly' be pulled out of the UEFA
hat when the draws were made!
With the Cypriot-Russian group having sold their control earlier this month, it is only to be hoped that the new regime straightens things out.
The worrying aspect is that the investment group that are the new owners are anonymous.
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Below
(and for our cellular network only), we draw our assessments of the
illicit money flows relating to AC Parma, their ownership, the global
betting markets and their related offshore financial centres.
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