| Follow the money! 13:13 - Oct 2 with 1245 views | 49thseason |
Any reader of crime novels will be familiar with the expression "follow the money" as the means to solve intricate cases. This is what we are faced with in our dealings with the people who mean us harm. So... money..often illegally obtained, often from drugs, prostitution, blackmail, people trafficking etc. Apparently there is £2Tr (trillion.. a million millions) of illegal money circulating every year, 5% of global GDP. Somehow this money has to be converted from "dirty money" to " clean money" i.e. money that is undetectable by authorities whose aim is to prevent the circulation of dirty money and thereby its sources. In 2016 $4.2Bn was laundered through 60 HSBC accounts in Hong Kong and this aftermthe bank had promised to be more circumspect having been caught laundering 100s of millions of dollars fron South American drugs gangs. In 2017, Deutsche Bank was fined nearly $700 million for allowing money laundering. The fines stemmed from a scheme of artificial trades between Moscow, London and New York that authorities said were used to launder $10 billion out of Russia. I imagine a fine of less than 10% of the money laundered is probwbly seen asmthe "cost of doing business", especially for a bank that holds over $30 trillion of derivatives and has had its share price tumble from €140 in 2007 to €11 today
The tricky part of "laundering" is what I believe is known as "layering", moving dirty money through a series of entities such as offshore accounts, through different regimes and often into and out of seemingly perfectly legal companies. One of the tricks is to operate these money transfers in relatively small numbers that do not in themselves attract attention but perhaps involving hundreds of accounts, in the US, amounts of over $10k going in and out of accounts have to be notified to the IRS by the banks. This is not the case of course in countries where the regime is happy to simply take your money and "disappear" you without trace. And in a developing world there are lots of people who have become very rich by highly illegal means and who need to convert their illegal money into something legal and which allows them to "escape" from their illegal activities.
Normally there is a cost involved in cleaning money so to perhaps being able to put dirty money into a profitable business capable of being sold again and again for more and more money means that a nefarious investor gets to keep more of his nefarious money.
All of which leads us to people who have criminal backgrounds, involved in multiple small businesses and who seem to have an unusual interest in stuggling football clubs with potential... sound familiar?
Imagine if someone with less than honorable intentions had bought a 51% shareholding in say a football club and having bought control decided to issue lets say 10m shares at £2 each and imagine if those shares were bought by multiple people wanting to hide some dirty money. The money is invested in a training facility, some highly promising young players, maybe even a new ground, and at some point is then sold to say a "chinese investor" who has a pile of cash to "get out of china".... dirty money turns clean , then dirty again ... ad infinitum.
So why Rochdale? Because there were only 500,000 shares? Ergo only 250,001 or so to buy, about the cost of a top Rolls Royce? And how do the people who "front" these deals make money? Maybe by keeping their mouths shut, perhaps by being given a slice of the action?
Now, lets play a game..
Who do we know that has a drugs conviction and involvement in lots of small companies? Who do we know that has apparently been involved in Chinese deals and football clubs? Who do,we know that is involved with high-end motor cars that seem to be bought and sold regularly? Who do we know that has already "fronted" a takeover of a football club? Supposing we considered all these apparently random people and events as being all linked in a common purpose.. imagine if a director of one football club started talking to the director or CEO of another one and realised that the magical number of "50% plus 1" was within reach for a relatively small amount, particularly if the biggest shareholder was lets say a " distressed seller".
As they say , "follow the money". Who might know people in need of "clean money"? Who might realise that a football club in need of cash might be a good place to wash dirty money? Who might imagine that turning a relatively poor club into something more "investable" could be an excellent money churning device? Players in, players out, "undisclosed fees" bigger crowds, promotions, re-development, and literally Trillions of pounds looking for a big washing machine every year. And how do they get their money back? Simple, individually they could sell their shares to someone else who wants to wash some cash and maybe buy them back in say 12 months, for a fee of course, rather like buying and selling high value vehicles with the same garage (these people always know someone else in the same "industry"). Or they sell the whole kit and kaboodle to someone with a large pile of money that they need to move quickly and then start looking for another football club.. who knows they might already have one in mind, there are always relegation candidates and financially distressed clubs. There may even be smaller clubs that have already been targeted ready for a big "takeover", perhaps even clubs that have already been used previously on a smaller scale, perhaps as a "test" and are now ready for takeover number 2 or number 3. Perhaps a conversation takes place over a couple of beers and a mini pork pie in a boardroom after a game, someone mentions that there is a major shareholder who wants out quickly and is looking for a buyer of his shares and might be perhaps "motivated" to sell in some way.
This sort of criminality may well be embedded within the football industry, there always seem to be clubs running into financial difficulties these days, bigger wage bills, bigger transfer fees, wave after wave of unlikely investors seemingly happy to lose money "chasing the dream". People blame TV money but is that really the case?
There is £4bn of debt in the Premiership. Is a loan clean or dirty money? |  | | |  |
| Follow the money! on 13:27 - Oct 2 with 1206 views | James1980 |
OCG's are also fans of a bust out, could a football club be used as a front for one of those? |  |
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