————————————————————–
Click here to become part of the definitive history of Woolwich Arsenal FC
Follow us on Twitter @Untold Arsenal
————————————————————–
By Tony Attwood
I was planning to put up a story today (a couple of days late) saying that a third person has been arrested by the police detectives who are investigating allegations that Tottenham Hotspur spied on Olympic officials during its stadium bid. This follows my earlier account of odd doings down the Lane.
Only then I find last night that the news has broken that a fourth man has now been arrested. If they keep going at this rate half of London is going to be in the dock soon.
As reported before, among the items alleged to have found their way to Tottenham H are Karen Brady’s mobile phone bills showing details of each and every call that has been made during a set period. The court has ruled that the records have been “unlawfully obtained”.
The allegation throughout is that Tottenham and its men spied on officials during Tottenham’s failed bid to take over the Olympic Stadium after the “Games” later this year and Tottenham H are now accused of ordering surveillance on the 14 members of the Olympic Park Legacy Company’s board while they were bidding for the rights to move out of north London into the east end. The bid was thrown out and West Ham United’s bid was accepted, before the whole process broke down in October 2011.
Allegations against Tottenham then started to emerge including one by the Olympic Legacy Committee chair Margaret Ford during a London Assembly committee hearing last year.
Two people were arrested soon after and accused of illegal procurement of information. Then on Wednesday last week the police said they had arrested a 57-year-old man in Cheshire “on suspicion of fraud offences”. Now the fourth man has been found.
West Ham United and the Olympic Park Legacy Company allege information was unlawfully obtained, and Tottenham deny everything.
Challenges by Tottenham H and Leyton O, plus a complaint to the European Commission made the government realise that court action would go on for years leaving the stadium empty. So as the recriminations and arrests started the UK government changed their policy and announced that the stadium would instead remain in public ownership.
The new plan is that the venue will remain in public ownership and rented out to West Ham (or maybe someone else, it is hard to say). So once again, as with Manchester City, the poor British tax payer ends up paying for a ground of a club that he/she doesn’t support.
The men arrested by the Metropolitan Police’s Economic and Specialist Crime Command have been ordered to return to a south London police station in February.
Meanwhile on the Tottenham front the trial of Tottenham media darling “HR” is eagerly awaited. Also in the dock will be Milan Manderic. During Mr R’s time at Portsmouth the club racked up debts well in excess of £150 million (although of course there may be no connection between this and the accused).
Anyway, just to finish our round up of the funny ol game, and with no connection with Tottenham H, Neuchatel Xamax have been removed from the Swiss Super League less than 12 months after being taken over by Chechen businessman Bulat Chagaev. The accusation is that the club was suspected of using a falsified Bank of America document as a financial guarantee last year. The falseness came to light because the document contains spelling mistakes.
Mr Chagaev bought the club in May 2011, apparently saying he wanted to take Xamax into the Champions League. He then sacked four of the coaching and several players plus (and this is the fun bit) the entire admin staff, meaning the club could not print tickets for the opening game of the season. I imagine that meant everyone had to pay cash (but I have no proof of this at all, and it is totally speculation on my part). Chagev got rid of or was left by all of the club’s sponsors and then accused the media of persecuting him because of his nationality.
The club is now able to appeal.
——————————————-
Who really controls the refs in the EPL? The authorities or a couple of clubs?
When a club is bought, spends big and collapses. How money laundering in football works
Just to add to the ‘funny old game’. The poor Darling Darlington might just be dying. 129 year old club going bust due to mismanagment.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story/_/id/1009797/dale-johnson:-time-running-out-for-darlington?cc=4716
I fear we are soon to reach a tipping point where a lot of strange things will start happening to a lot of clubs. A shame, these clubs are part of communities, they have been taken from their fans by promises of quick fix short term gains. A lot of bubbles could be about to burst and in the most spectacular fashion. It is only a matter of tme before a giant currently running in an unsustainable fashion falters. It may be a euro crash halting bail out funds, it may be a money laundering invesigation, who knows what black swans await some clubs?
I at times wish we did more to ensure success, I sometimes wish we could buy certain players, and pay wages to keep us at the top, but looking around, it is quite frightening really.
As for the Spuds, there seems to be a regular stench of things not being quite right coming out of the Lane these days, and no extreme media courting will ultimately disguise that stench
I have ni idea why but I increasingly find myself agreeing with the comments fired out by Mandy Dodd. Are you Tony A in another disguise or the sweet voice of reason.
Anyway keep posting.
Mike C
I can honestly say that I am not and never have been Mandy Dodd. This can be proved from tomorrow afternoon when I take a break from the site and won’t be seen for a little while (Walter will be in charge). So if Mandy Dodd posts you can be sure it is not me.
And I am not Tony, but thanks for your kind words!
I’m afraid there are large numbers of unscrupulous people who get hold of information they shouldn’t.
A director of a company I worked for about 8 years ago knew what I had bought on my credit card on holiday – how, I know not. But he did. He was a spy with links to those capable of bugging houses, that much is sure……I tested that by writing things about him on my PC and he relayed that in his obnoxious sly way not long after in the office. Shame he was so incompetent at technology consulting…..if he’d only stuck to all the stuff he was good at (6 Sigma, lean manufacturing, all the other standard tools of SME consulting) we wouldn’t have come to blows.
In my next job, a very dodgy Scot also knew about my rail ticket purchases from Leeds Central station, again carried out using Lloyds TSB card. As he worked for a company supplying software to the rail industry, perhaps he bought favours, just as NOTW journalists bought coppers? Shame he was so hot on this that and the other but so loose on his morals concerning information acquisition.
I’m afraid you should all be aware that your private information is no longer private, will never be private and banks, credit card companies, mobile phone companies are all totally unethical and sell their information for profit. If they don’t leave thousands of credit card details lying around in public places on data sticks.
I’m sure Alan Sugar will help this website’s enquiries into matters of this sort (bugging, not stealing data), having been such an upstanding father and all that. Yeah right………
Never underestimate the BBC either where bugging is concerned. They bug with impunity, bet with impunity and could profitably answer questions at a corruption enquiry concerning Borussia Dortmund 1 Hertha Berlin 2 amongst other things.
Even your site has been used to fix grand slam tennis events. You ran some story in 2010 and there was a comment by Mr Attwood about T-shirts…..I wrote: ‘you clearly understand why Cambridge Uni netball players don’t run up T-shirts’ just as a joke. Lo and behold a Cambridge (Russia) tennis player retired after 1 set of a grand slam semi final against an Oxford (Italy) player, for whom special t-shirts had been run up. A comment on the site showed that a hint I had not intended to make had been taken (since I have never intended fixing any matches, will never intend that but find to my cost that my comments can be used by criminals to do precisely that).
You can’t be too careful I say………ask the five losing Brits on day 1 of the Aussie Open. It might have been coincidence, but I wonder……particularly after my fairly to the point email to Andrew Jennings of BBC/www.transparencyinsport.org about how to go about exposing corruption in FIFA. To which he replied: ‘Cheeky Bastard!! Happy New Year!!!!’
Dirty business here, it sounds like. Does it never end? Great write up Tony.
@Shard:
Interesting article there about Darlington. Of course, I don’t know exactly what happened there, or why this owner was so determined to build that new stadium that clearly wasn’t needed and cost way too much, but money laundering is one hypothetical scenario that definitely fits the facts here.
One of the hypothetical examples provided in the FATF report actually involved money laundering through the building of a new stadium.
Basically, if the owner was allied or affiliated with the contractors who received the money to build the stadium (and particularly if he owned those companies), it would be a way of getting his original investment in the club back. When the club pays the expenses for the stadium, they’re actually paying the money to the owner.
Don’t know if that happened here, of course, but it would fit the facts.
There”s nothing wrong with being afraid, sunday looms and everyone”s avoiding the most obvious . After Swansea can we possibley prevail against Man Utd omens seem bad,a fan base at war divided, a team beset with injuries and defensive frail tives, memories of an away nightmare.What a test if they come through this, anything is possible and i hope that is fourth place, if not so be it.
@legweak:
I personally have faith that Arsenal will throw everything they can at ManU come Sunday. We’ll see what happens, and maybe I’m naive, but I still have faith in the Arsenal.
Really, the main way to determine whether someone has honest intentions in building a new stadium would be the question of whether someone has honest intentions of repaying the accompanying debt.
If the answer is ‘yes,’ it would be an honest business transaction. If the answer is ‘no…’ Well, then you would have additional grounds to ask the question of ‘why?'”
@anne not that i dont have any faith in my team but its just the men who will be officiating this game thats making me have very little hope of a win..dean`s history with us is well documented and as if having him as ref isnt bad enough having dowd in his ear will certainly be even worse…tbh ill be happy with a draw
I haven’t got a clue about the rights and wrongs of the Spuds/Olympic Stadium situation, but you are completely wrong about the position re City’s stadium.
First, without City’s agreement to take on the stadium after the games, the Commonwealth games simply would not have come to Manchester. So Manchester would not have had the country’s only world class velodrome (you may have noticed our national success in cycling since the 2000 games) the City of Manchester would not have had an Olympic standard swimming facility open and used every day by the people of Manchester, and the City of Manchester would not have had the boost provided by those games.
Secondly, the British taxpayers do not own City’s stadium, the City of Manchester does. And you know what? They lease it to City. And the richest club in the world pay rent for the stadium. The capacity at Maine Road was 33,000. Now, the capacity is 48,000. The rent MCFC pays the City is one half of the difference between the first 33,000 tickets sold and the actual gate. In other words, MCFC keeps the 33,000 ticket sales they would have got at Maine Road anyway, and the rest is split 50/50 with the City of Manchester. That agreement was deemed to be fair, of course, by the Audit Committee whose task it is to ensure that the City of Manchester is getting proper value for counciltax payers’ money. At an average of £40 per ticket, assuming average attendance of 46,000 (which is conservative) assuming 25 home games a season (inclusive of league & all cup competitions) that equates to an income stream for the City of Manchester of £6,500,000 p.a. in addition to which the value of their asset will probably increase during the life of the lease.
Speaking of which, the term of the lease is 250 years, so the income stream is essentially a very valuable long term revenue source for the City.
MCFC did not ask the City of Manchester to bid for the Commonwealth games. It agreed to participate in a way that benefited both parties in the short and long term, and which incidentally benefitted the nation too in some respects.
I’m not defending THFC’s position re the Olympic stadium because I don’t know enough to comment. But judging from what you say about MCFC, you don’t know enough to comment on that situation either.