Portus-Eg blog

Mad Facts, Beyond the PlunderDome Part 2 21/2/14

2014-02-21T01:55:00.000-08:00

Mad Facts, Beyond The Plunderdome – Part 2 - February 21st 2014

continuing the update series of those old friends who came to Fratton Park and helped turn it into what I call The PlunderDome

I love Laurel and Hardy.

Phil Jones lookalike Stan Laurel with his crazy hair and Ollie Hardy have me in stitches every time and I’m forever humming their song “The Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia”.

When I think of Andrew Andronikou’s latest escapades though it’s more a case of droning the ‘Blue Chip Mountains Of The Square Mile’.

Yep, Handy Andy Andronikou (AA), our beloved ex-Pompey admin, has found himself a couple of cracking City-based admins to get his creative accounting mitts stuck into since he left Pompey.

What’s more the admins involve two old Pompey friends from the Falcondrone days, Yoram Yossifoff and Daniel Azogui (aka Daniel Azougy).

Yossifoff was, along with Chainrai, part of the Falcondrone consortium in 2009 which had the elusive Ali Al Faraj – the Saudi business version of the Harlot Pimpforsale – as its figurehead and whom passed the Premier League’s Fit & Proper test without ever setting foot in this country.

Azogui then came along and wielded his fiscal axe like all the modern day corporate Vikings do by making a series of, to put it mildly, 'questionable' decisions.

This eventually paved the way to AA appearing like a miniscule tanned genie at the request of Yossifoff’s old mate, the lamp-rubbing Balram “GetMyLadIn” Chainrai in February 2010 to supposedly ease our pain going into admin.

The rest is history and well-chronicled.

Headache Material

Ever since last summer though AA has no doubt muttered “This is another fine mess you’ve got me into Yossi” as he waded through the labyrinth-like details of his latest admins.

His likely mutterings come about mainly because of an alleged fraud case involving a Caymans-based outfit called Axiom Legal Financing Fund which started up in 2008.

Axiom’s was basically a £100m + fund, paid in by ordinary investors, which gave loans to various solicitors to help with litigation cases - mainly those on a No Win No Fee basis.

Axiom was exposed in October 2012 by the excellent David Marchant of Miami-based OffshoreAlert.Com as a possible scam and the legal consequences have been ongoing to this day, mainly played out in the Grand Cayman courts and the High Court in London,

The details are a tad complicated so bear with me as I try and tell the story.

Here goes:

Main "brain" and Fund founder of the alleged Axiom scam is claimed to be an apparently ex-UK Olympic cyclist turned solicitor called Timothy Paul Joseph Schools of Tangerine Investments Ltd – who were the investment advisor (advised to which solicitor firms the fund should give money to) for the Axiom Fund up until October 2012.

Previously Synergy Solutions (also it's claimed a Tim Schools company) had been investment manager for the Axiom fund up until January 2012 to when Tangerine took over.

Meanwhile, it is believed that another Schools firm, Synergy IOM, had remained as Loan Manager throughout and were responsible for organising loan repayments, doling out the Axiom money and holding any cash.

Therefore, how it worked was, law firms applied to Axiom for funds - first of all Synergy Solutions, then later their successors Tangerine, considered the requests. Synergy IOM then doled out the cash to successful applicants like a rampant faulty cash machine. Therefore Schools controlled, it is claimed, where the Axiom cash went.

It turns out 75% of the Axiom money given out went to just three “Panel Law Firms”, two of them being Ashton Fox and ATM Solicitors who received £74m between them.

As it turns out, Schools allegedly owned them both.

Schools left Tangerine Investments the same month (October 2012) after the balloon went up about Axiom – The fund itself was soon suspended and KPMG were appointed to investigate what was going on and later in December 2012 were appointed the Axiom Fund receivers.

Familiar Ingredients

Now it becomes more entangled with the Pompey-related twist I referred to earlier.

Tangerine Investments in turn is owned by Otterswick Ltd of the BVI who also own...City Equities Investment Ltd (CEL), who happens to be Yoram Yossifoff’s investment outfit in the City area of London.

Yossifoff as it happens is also apparently the ultimate owner of Otterswick BVI.

Yossifoff had also set up Otterswick UK Ltd specifically to buy out CEL in 2011 and later brought on board the services of Sean Michael Blackwell, who was once disciplined by the Financial Services Authority in the mid 2000’s as being “unfit” to be a City financial adviser.

Blackwell knew Yossifoff of old and had been a fellow director in Tri-Care Homes Ltd.

Daniel Azogui lists himself as a “consultant” to CEL and his good friend Yossifoff. He however forgets to mention in his bio his suspension as a lawyer for 14 years from 2002 for a variety of offences from the 1990’s including fraud and breaking and entering.

Azogui also says he advised Yossi’s on his purchase of 10 Scottish nursing homes which then became part of the *Southern Cross care scandal in 2011. Yossifoff, as a landlord via his firm Loyds Properties, was named and shamed by the GMB union revelations in 2011 (* highlighted in this blog 13/7/12).

I also wonder if Azogui had anything to do with the £1billion London property deals Yossifoff was involved in, as highlighted in The Guardian’s exposé on Offshore Secrets last year?

Having Azogui advising you I reckon must be a bit like getting a colour-blind sparky to rewire your house but it's a free world and he and Yossi were old mates after all.

With Axiom Fund by now suspended, CEL in January 2013 put together a proposal for rescuing Axiom by offering to take the place of Tangerine as the fund investment manager - bit like a mink offering chick babysitting services after a fox has had the parents away in my opinion but worth a try.

This offer though went down like a can of Tizer at a Bordeaux wine tasting session and it was refused on 1st February 2013 by Judge Foster in Grand Cayman Court at the request of the Axiom Fund directors and Cayman Fiduciary watchdog CIMA due to “perceived conflicts of interest”.

Seeing as Otterswick (Yossifoff) apparently owned both CEL & Tangerine, this factor would be a good guess in my opinion as to the “perceived conflict of interest” as mentioned above in refusing CEL to take over the Axiom Fund management.

Grant Thornton meanwhile were appointed receivers of Axiom in court by Judge Foster also on February 1^st 2013, thereby disappointing CEL who had preferred KPMG for some reason to do the job they’d been doing since December 2012.

Here We Go Around The Mulberry Bush….

Those pining for some Andronikou action, fear not, at this point he comes into the fray.

One lawyer firm who were also in receipt of Axiom funds doled out by Tangerine=Synergy=Schools was the by now financially-troubled Rohrers & Co, based in the City area in London, run by solicitor Christopher Hale, who had appointed Andronikou on the 28^th June 2013 to do their admin.

In one of those extraordinary twists of fate, the very same day as AA got in at Rohrers the Solicitors Regulatory Authority met to discuss Rohrers & Co’s possible involvement in the Axiom affair.

Five days later on July 3^rd 2013 the SRA made an “Intervention”, which meant going into the offices of Rohrers & Co, taking away the company records and documents and closing them down, citing “suspected dishonesty”. Eight other lawyer firms and individuals were ‘intervened’ with that day too.

One of those other firms closed down the same day as Rohrers was lawyer firm Mulberry Finch, who specialised in visa applications, to whom Andronikou meanwhile had, in the three days he’d been in charge at Rohrers, made a deal on July 1^st to sell Rohrers’ assets (client files mainly) for £95,000.

The only formal offer for Rohrers assets had come from Lorrells LLP solicitor firm for £95,000 also but AA chose Mulberry as they had a better indemnity insurance cover.

Considering how long he took to find a buyer for Pompey and then CSI’s assets (as reported in PlunderDome Part 1 previously) this was a seemingly amazing burst of speed by AA.

AA said in his admin doc the Mulberry deal was made without knowledge of the imminent SRA action. The deal though was eventually binned as a result of the joint closures.

Fortune Teller Yoram

Meanwhile, on May 16th and 22^nd2013, barely a month before Rohrers admin came along, CEL and Otterswick Ltd had lodged two fixed charges each against Rohrer & Co and its assets.

On the Rohrer & Co creditors list Otterswick and CEL are shown as being owed the princely sum of £2 each. The liabilities due are unknown on the four charges they lodged.

Other Rohrer unsecured creditors added up to £8.9m, including a whopping £8.3m to lawyer firm Ashton Fox Solutions Ltd….controlled allegedly by Timothy Schools as I mentioned earlier.

Ashton Fox had previously transferred more than 2,800 compensation claim client files (worth £2.8m if they had successful outcomes) to Rohrers in mid-2012 after a request from fund manager Tangerine, also apparently run by Schools.

On February 26^th 2013, KPMG said Rohrers had defaulted on the Axiom Loan Agreement from May 2012 and asked for the £14m plus including interest they claimed Rohrers owed Axiom.

Rohrers disputed this figure but inevitably soon found they couldn’t meet their debt repayments so went into admin.

My Kneebone’s Connected To My Thighbone, My Thighbone Is Connected To My…..etc etc

One curiosity arises in the Andronikou 16^th August 2013 admin proposal document for Rohrers & Co.

In it, according to Andronikou, in January 2013 Rohrers said they had transferred £3.2m to an Austrian lawyer named Jurgen Brandstatter of law firm BMA for apparently investment purposes – this money was placed in a Swiss bank account and was to await Rohrer instructions on how it should be spent.

On the next page in AA’s doc however there’s a paragraph which seems somewhat at odds with that stated above.

“I have been advised (by Rohrer/Hale)….in late December 2012 Otterswick Ltd and City Equities Investment Management Ltd were contacted to assist with the retrieval process. A services agreement was apparently signed on December 28^th 2012, which gave both parties an interest in the recovery of the money”.

Yossifoff covering all the money bases then, that uncanny vision of his which saw him lodge four fixed charges a few weeks before Rohrer went into admin served him well in this instance too when his firms were “asked” to recover money from a Swiss bank account before it apparently had even got put in there.

Nothing like a good dose of premonition I suppose.

CEL & Otterwick were partially successful in their moneygrabbing task, £540,000 was paid in February 2013 to Fladgates Fielder Solicitors who were acting for Otterswick.

Fladgates incidentally were the lawyer firm Mark Jacob, ex-Pompey director used to work for in the early 2000’s and they also advised Sacha Gaydamak on his 2008 purchase of Global Brands via his fellow Luxemburg investment outfit Belvia SARL.

But you have to ask yourself, as I have done, just WHY did Rohrers (Christopher Hale) contact CEL & Otterswick in particular to retrieve the money from Switzerland in the first place?

Also, why did Rohrers not contact the Austrian lawyer Brandstatter themselves and just ask for their own money back?

Hmmmm. I can hazard a reasonable guess as to the answer and suspect many of you legal battle-hardened Pompey fans reading this can too but I suppose the authorities and courts will sort out the truth…….

Almost forgot – Rohrers was first founded in 2007 and went under the name Legal Direct back then. Owner was…Timothy Schools.

And Now For Nothing Completely Different

Since February 2013 things have moved on a bit.

Tangerine Investments is now in liquidation.
Ashton Fox went into admin not long after Grant Thornton were appointed Axiom receivers. They have been since sold on.
Timothy Schools was first investigated by the SRA in 2011 for his alleged misconduct during his time at his ATM Solicitors firm and currently faces 11 charges. The matter has been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
You have to ask yourself as to why Schools was allowed to carry on dealing with the Axiom Fund cash disposals for a full year until the Axiom Funds’ suspension after he was first investigated by the SRA.
In August 2013 Grant Thornton, Axiom Receivers, were granted court permission to take whatever legal action necessary in Canada, Isle of Man and Switzerland to recover assets for Axiom investors.
Grant Thornton claim Schools, via his wholly or partially-owned companies, has swindled £81m out of Axiom Fund investors had raised. No mention of Yossifoff as yet but the case is still ongoing.
Schools has vigorously denied all the allegations made against him.
Grant Thornton also applied in August 2013 to have Andronikou removed as Rohrer & Co admin for unspecified reasons. ‘Perceived conflict of interest’ perhaps, considering the Pompey association between Andronikou and Yossifoff?
Andronikou lasted at Rohrers until November 2013 when Haslers of Loughton in Essex were appointed to oversee the liquidation of Rohrers & Co which is now underway.
There’s also a court case of The Law Society v Rohrers & Co which got underway late last year.

As I’ve said previously these are ongoing cases so there are no definitive outcomes to anything just yet. A latest Axiom Fund (JP SPC 1) vs Schools hearing was held at the High Court in London at end of last month. Will keep you posted as to what happens.

A Special Finale…….

It may not come as that much of a surprise to hear that CEL have now gone into administration. On October 11^th 2013. Never guess who the joint administrator is along with Peter Kubik, also of UHY?

Cue the second bout of likely unimpressed mutterings from AA.

It’s no ordinary admin either, it’s a Special Administration, only the 5^th of its kind since the format was introduced in 2011 to allow fast-tracking of investment firm insolvencies, a legal legacy of the Lehman Brothers fiasco earlier in the 2000’s.

Some interesting bits too arise out of the CEL admin, some gleaned from the November 2013 CEL admin proposal doc penned by AA's joint admin Peter Kubik who also stated there was no conflict of interest regarding UHY's appointment as CEL admin.

Really? Hmmm.

CEL had an agreement with Beaufort Securities where they passed on client files and got a commission. Beaufort were originally Hoodless Brennan Markets until May 2013 – Sean Michael Blackwell used to work for them for years until 2011.

Hoodless Brennan are a familiar name to Rangers FC fans but that’s another story.

CEL used a client account at Lorrells LLP solicitors to store up £1.225m after the Finance Authorities warned CEL they had to raise that amount by May 31^st 2013 to cover their company's financial obligations.

Yossifoff himself is said to have raised £860,000 of the required amount by selling CEL shares to Otterswick - as he owned both, this action seems a bit like 'Utaka Selling Himself' to me but hey, what do I know?

Quite why CEL still went into admin despite apparently raising this amount is not clear nor is it clear where the money raised went in the end.

Lorrells LLP’s main man is Mark Lorrell, who became a director of Rohrers wannabe buyer Mulberry Finch on May 31^st2013, four weeks before their SRA closure. Lorrells also tried to buy Rohrers assets as mentioned earlier in this narrative but got turned down in favour of...Mulberry Finch.

Go figure.

Andronikou was, as it happens, admin for the previous version of Lorrells LLP – Lorrell Georgiou Nicholas LLP – in 2010.

Also, as part of the fund raising efforts by CEL to get the £1.225m needed by May 31^st 2013, they leased part of their offices to…Rohrers & Co for £75,000 a year.

Nothing like keeping a close eye on 'things' I suppose and bloody handy to get four charges in place against Rohrers' assets too.

Couple of mildly interesting Pompey bits regarding Beaufort Securities – they have shares in and had advised clients to buy their Range Resources shares in November 2013 – Range Resources have 40% ownership of Strait Oil & Gas in Georgia who have the oil entrepreneur cum vet Alan Hitchins on board. Hitchins if you remember was part of the Keith Harris bid team.

Talking of Harris, his old firm SP Advisors of Kiev last week took a 12% stake in Beaufort International Associates Ltd, part of the Hooodless Brennan Holdings stable like Beaufort Securities.

SP were formerly known as Seymour Pierce Advisors – on its management team as Vice President is Anton Gorbunenko, younger brother and employee of Denis Gorbunenko who fled to London after his bank Rodovid was involved in a multi-billion pound Ponzi scam scandal in 2009, the largest of its kind ever in Eastern Europe.

Denis Gorbunenko funded Seymour Pierce to keep them afloat for a couple of years (about £3m) and then tried to buy them but got turned down by the Financial Services Authority in February 2013.

AA Loves His Specials…

Obviously on a roll now, Andronikou was last month in January 2014 appointed admin of London-based Hartmann Capital Ltd. This is in fact the 6^th Special Administration.

Handy Andy as we know has a special way with him!

Suspect many Pompey fans can name a special place for him too.

As usual, there’s a football coincidence involved, though not Pompey this time – two of the directors of Hartmann, Jeremy Wray and Andrew Fitton, turn out to be ex-directors and chairmen of Swindon Town – who also have had the pleasure of Andronikou as their admin.

Weren't we the lucky ones to have all these types of professional business people involved in Portsmouth Football Club?

Here's a simplified flow chart thingy of the above story. click on image for larger print.

Having trawled through seemingly endless acres of cyberspace in my Pompey investigations over the past 5 years or so I have noticed the same names, mainly in the financial world, keep cropping up in football club ownership circles.

Now I’m starting to get the hang of this flow chart thingy it might be a worthwhile future exercise to do a similar chart job as above for those names….hmmm.

Portus Eg Copyright 21/2/14 All opinions are mine alone.

Pompey - Mad Facts Beyond The PlunderDome Part 1

2014-01-30T02:01:00.000-08:00

Mad Facts – Beyond The PlunderDome – Part 1 - 30/1/14

Nine months ago was the last time I last wrote a blog – Oh, and since Pompey fans started running their own club too.

There may have been a pregnant pause in my blog output but the new-born Pompey baby is thriving though occasionally, like all babies, it falls on its arse after a faltering step or two.

It’s having to endure a harsh upbringing but it will grow into an independent and healthy adult, making its thousands of parents very proud while doing so.

Just why our Pompey baby has had to endure this hardship in the first place, given the money the overseas grandparents had at their disposal during the Premiership years to ensure a rosy future, still makes me mad.

So I’ve been keeping half an eye out on as many of these unworthy grandparents as I can, fervently hoping one day one of them at least cops a bit of jail time or is fined into bankruptcy.

What follows over next few weeks will be a series of blog updates about the latest antics of the myriad of ex - directors/owners/bidders/advisors who I feel all helped in a way grind Portsmouth FC almost into extinction by turning Fratton Park into Plunderdome*.

(*Plunderdome is my pet euphemism for Fratton Park which has been ransacked of all its assets and money - in our case the boardroom furniture too)

Will CSI get a forensic investigation too?

We’ll start this series with a little update on ex-Pompey owner Vladimir Antonov, lover of sports clubs, big houses and fast cars.

Unfortunately the money to pay for it all belonged to somebody else by the looks of it so it appears he is the one grandparent most likely at the moment to receive some kind of justice.

As many of you will have no doubt read by now, Antonov lost his recent court case against being extradited to Lithuania to face charges for his part in the alleged defrauding of his own bank Snoras to the tune of £440m or so.

Some of those Snoras creditors are apparently not people who have reputations for bathing daily in the milk of human kindness and being awash with forgiving tendency shampoo so Antonov must be both a tad concerned and swathed in body armour I should think.

As many Pompey fans will bitterly recall, it was Antonov’s Convers Sports Initiatives (CSI) which took over Pompey in June 2011, an event which briefly lifted the Portpin pall of gloom which had hung over the club since late 2009.

Predictably, given the dubious nature of some aspects of Antonov’s background, less than six months later the Snoras affair blew up and we all knew the party was over. Our latest owner was in cuffs and admin was a foregone conclusion.

Much has been chronicled about Antonov and Snoras so I won’t go into any detail on that but not much has been written about happened to Antonov’s CSI. We all knew they went into admin too but what has happened to them since then?

What? Not Him Again!

For starters, the man whose bears a faint resemblance to Tom Cruise suffering a severe mushroom allergy reaction, Andrew “loads of interested buyers” Andronikou (AA), was at first admin and later became liquidator of CSI in September 2012.

Our old friend AA was appointed the admin of CSI at the request of Portpin (a certain Mr Balram Chainrai ) through terms in their floating charge against CSI of 25/11/11.

No surprise there then, given Portpin’s £500,000 clumsy club-funding offer in London’s High Court in February 2012 if AA was appointed as PFC 2010 admin - thankfully the Judge had a bout of common sense that day and PKF/BDO were appointed instead – the rest is history.

Back to the CSI story.

Portpin had then, literally within days of Antonov being arrested on 16/11/11, lodged two charges at Companies House against CSI and all its assets, one in particular on the 25/11/11 (as mentioned above) concentrating on the prized CSI asset of PFC.

This amazing burst of Portpin speed in covering their fiscal arse was the business equivalent of teleporting – pity they showed no such alacrity before or after this event.

First thing that struck me on reading the CSI admin and liquidation progress reports was that in every one Andronikou noted faithfully that Portpin were owed approximately £17m by CSI regarding the sale of Portsmouth FC, like repeating it over and over would make it come true or appear.

Wouldn’t be that surprised either if it turns out AA wears ruby slippers, clicks his heels three times and has a dog called SubTotol by his side every time he writes an admin report.

Thanks to the charges lodged Portpin were also the only secure creditors of CSI. How convenient.

It turns out CSI’s only assets were in the shareholdings of its 9 subsidiaries, therefore Portpin, as the only secure creditors, were entitled to the lion’s share of any monies gained by the selling of those CSI assets by Andronikou – meaning basically not only did the Portpin cat get the cream but also got to keep the bloody cow too.

CSI were owned by Antonov (85%), Chris Akers (5%) and Roman Dubov (10%). I’ll catch up with the latter two ex-Pompey directors in a later blog.

Don’t Get Much For Your Money Nowadays…

Here’s a rundown of what has happened to the CSI subsidiaries to date:

1/ BOOM CYCLE

CSI offered a loan facility of £100,000 in return for a 11.6% shareholding - £25,000 was drawn on this facility – sold for £10,000.

2/ DBG CONVERS

CSI paid £100,000 for a 51% stake in DBG – sold for £5,000.

3/ GP WEEKLY

CSI paid £160,000 for a 51% stake in GP – sold for £10,000.

4/ EXECUTIVE SPORTS (Leaders In Sport)

CSI paid £1.8m for a 65% stake in EP – sold for £275,000.

5/ POWERPLAY GOLF

CSI £2m loan facility for a 51% stake – £485,000 drawn - sold for £40,000.

6/ GB SPORTS

CSI paid £400,000 for a 40% stake – sold for £10,000.

7/ SPORTS INTERNATIONAL

CSI offered a loan facility of £1.67m in return for a 51% stake - £525,000 was drawn on the facility – sold for £28,000.

8/ NORTH ONE SPORT

CSI paid £4.5m for 100% stake – further investment made it £8.13m in total - CVA dividend of £453,000.

9/ PORTSMOUTH FOOTBALL CLUB 2010 LTD

CSI paid £17.2m for 100% stake – CVA dividend of £247,000.

*Most of the above were current management buyouts*

Some notable points:

· Main CSI creditors besides Portpin include Bandiron Corporation, Plazmexon Investments, Gemini Investments and Antonov himself - all Antonov controlled companies.

· Second biggest CSI creditor after Portpin was Taurus Asset Management Fund which is on paper beneficially owned by Andrey Rudeshko – who just happened to have been a witness at Antonov’s wedding and Vladimir’s best mate. Rudeshko via Taurus was Antonov’s front man in buying 50% of Baltic Air a few years ago which caused much angst to the disgruntled Latvian government.

· CSI owes Antonov and his companies more than £19m.

· Being Pompey related, there has to be a coincidence – Rudeshko is also Pascal Najadi’s (backer for Keith Harris bid) partner in recently-opened Najadi & Partners in Moscow.

· The average cash realisations for the CSI asset sales were mainly between 2 - 5p in the £.

· A total of approx. £1.078m has been raised by the CSI assets sale.

· Portpin have had £275,000 of that so far but that amount doesn’t include what they took out of the sales of North One and Sports International (totalling £481,000) which occurred after September 2, 2013 when the figures were drawn up by Andronikou in his report.

· That £481k though I have included in the £1.078m total for CSI assets.

· Prescribed Part dividend for CSI’s unsecured creditors is about £134,000 – unpaid to date.

· CSI are still in liquidation today.

Regular As Courtwork

No strangers to litigation, Portpin are currently engaged in an ongoing London court battle with Vladimir Antonov over issues regarding “the sale of Portsmouth Football Club”.

This has been going on since January 2013 with another hearing held in October 2013.

A possible reason for this court case might be the following paragraph taken from the Portpin charge against CSI and their assets dated 25th November 2011 (the same one I referred to earlier in this narrative specifically about Pompey) :

"Promissory Note means the Promissory Note dated 1st June 2011 repayable on 10th May 2013 for the principal amount of £17,188,014.95 with a coupon of 8% p.a., payable a quarter in arrears issued by the Assignor as consideration for the assignment of the assets pursuant to the Assignment Agreement. " – (the assignor is CSI).

In other words, the terms for buying Pompey meant CSI promised to pay Portpin about £342,000 every three months for two years and then were supposed to pay a lump sum of almost £17.2m in May last year.

As we know, CSI went belly up after making just one quarterly payment and Portpin never got their promised cash lump sum in May last year - £17.2m good reasons to take Antonov to court I reckon, especially if Antonov was personal guarantor for CSI regarding the amount in the Promissory Note.

Add the fact we all know what London barristers and court cases cost – Portpin wouldn’t go to court just for beer money and a free ride on a Ferris Wheel.

Will Portpin get their money off Antonov?

Given the mess Antonov is in right now, and the queue of people waiting to snaffle whatever money Antonov has if he is found guilty, Portpin may never get any money back, never mind all of it.

Let me dry my eyes.

Copyright Portus-Eg (Nick Bain). All opinions expressed are mine.

Pompey Re-Born

2013-04-29T10:19:00.001-07:00

At Long Last Pompey are Re-born! 29/4/13

Finally the long-running Pompey ownership saga is over, the PST did it.

After what seemed an eternity April 2013 has brought its own showers of good news for Pompey fans.

April 10^th saw Portpin finally concede in the High Court that its Reign of Error at Portsmouth FC was over, news which had grown men in joyful tears and a seaside city bathed in euphoria.

April 19^th saw the Pompey Supporters Trust officially take over the club and get the club out of the most complicated administration English football has ever seen..

April 20^th saw the mother of all parties at Fratton Park as a jubilant 18,000 plus saw the demolition of promotion-chasing Sheffield United with a bevy of beautiful Brazilian dancers lending a surreal but enjoyable facet to the carnival atmosphere.

Smiling faces, glorious sunny day, non-stop singing, good football – the feelgood factor went off the scale that day and I found myself checking I was indeed at Fratton Park and not on the film set on a gooey “Ah Bless”–type movie.

Even now the good April news keeps on coming – competitive pay-on-the-day ticket prices, kids in for a fiver, no online booking fee, Whittingham offering the entire squad a chance to stay, season ticket prices and a new kit deal with a bespoke and unique Pompey design interlaced with a community deal to attract young players to the New Pompey.

Make no mistake, Pompey are now pioneers in the football world in this country.

The growing disillusionment with the meticulously-marketed and horrendously-expensive era of modern football will have piqued the interest of many fans up and down the country and they will be watching with interest at what happens at Pompey, wondering if they too could become a tangible part of their football club again as opposed to be mere paying customers of a corporate-led product outlet.

The usual gloom and doom merchants out in force of course –“Not enough money to run a football club”, “ A bunch of well-meaning amateurs “ etc.

Amazes me that the hugely experienced new board of directors will collectively, according to some, now suddenly shed their vast business acumen garnered through years of running their own multi-million pound turnover companies and turn into bumbling novices who cannot tell the difference between a balance sheet and a bed sheet.

Funnily enough I don’t feel that will happen and, having backed the PST bid throughout this blog, I am convinced that the fan-owned New Pompey will work.

A lot of that conviction comes from not only meeting them as people and fellow fans but from their backgrounds too. They know what they are doing and have the best interests of the club at heart – not something we have been able to say in many years about the clubs’ management.

Of course, being trailblazers of sorts, there are bound to be mistakes made. As long as the club learns from them I am sure fans will be tolerant.

Mark Catlin, the new Pompey CEO, seems to have energy and enthusiasm to burn and has wasted no time is setting about repairing decades of neglect in both the club infrastructure and the way the fanbase have been treated.

He is ably aided and abetted by Micah Hall, the newly-appointed club Engagement Manager, whose communication skills, both written and verbal, are renowned. He, like Catlin, has an abundance of “can-do” attitude and also possessor of an impressive work career to boot.

I cannot wait for the new season to start this coming August, a feeling I have not had in years.

I think back to that day on the tenth of this month at the High Court which was the culmination of a long hard road involving sock puppets, verbal slaggings, hissy fits, despair, joy with a dollop or two of sheer lunacy thrown in for good measure.

That day in the Rolls Building Court Number 30, like so many have been in recent years with Fratton Park affairs, was a tense drama-laden day never to be forgotten.

We had all seen how Portpin operated for the past four years and feared some last-minute devious plan. The Harris late bid, consequently curtly dismissed in court and elsewhere, had thrown an unwelcome spanner in the works so what else would they come up with?

As it happens the PST/Verisona bid team had played a blinder all along and had Portpin cornered, countering every move Portpin made and had the Football League, PFA, MP’s, Portsmouth City Council and PKF firmly onside by the end.

Added to their skilled manoeuvres came the fact court proceedings challenging the long-time dubious Portpin debenture had started the week before the High Court hearing.

Two High Court judges had previously in 2010 and 2012 raised queries about the debenture, finally it had been challenged and I am convinced this last act finally left Portpin with no option but to accept the PST offer, take the money and run.

Better that than risk the debenture being overturned and they could have ended up with nothing. They got some money and the dropping of the debenture challenge in return, the first wise move Portpin had made in a very long time in my opinion.

There are untold eye-opening stories to be aired about the bid process as a whole. I do understand that the excellent veteran Pompey blogger SJ Maskell will be writing them up in due course.

I also understand the long-rumoured book about the turbulent times at Pompey in recent years is currently being discussed and planned amongst those at the heart of it all.

That is a book I must and shall read!

So hopefully this will be the last blog of mine for the foreseeable future regarding Pompey. I will leave the blogging of the daily affairs to the more skilful writers whose numbers will no doubt grow in line with the clubs’ growth.

All eyes are on the Trust and the club and every move made will be closely watched and analysed but I have a good feeling the dark days of deceit, depression and downright financial skulduggery are behind us.

I would like to thank the entire PST bid team and Verisona for their fantastic dedication and determination in securing Pompey. Without them and the High Net Worth investors bailing the club out moneywise, the club would be toast. Thank you.

To my fellow Pompey fans who have dug deep to buy shares and part shares, thanks. And keep buying them along with tickets, scran in the ground and club shop goodies. The more you keep buying, the better your club will become.

Also a sneaky thanks to the Pompey Bloggers Collective. You know who you are, it has been a privilege.

Portus-Eg 29/4/2013 All views expressed are mine alone.

Takeover Toils As Pompey fans Blood Boils

2013-02-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

Takeover Toils As Pompey Fans Blood Boils 1/2/13

Exasperation!

Good word, sums up the feelings of many a Pompey fan I should think following the latest adjournment yesterday of the PKF v Portpin case regarding the valuation of Fratton Park.

It’s been ten weeks or so since my last blog. In that time Pompey haven’t won for 15 games, PST announced they would be buying Fratton park outright and the Mayans calendar proved to be as accurate as the Pompey 2013 one.

Yet we still remain in limbo about PST taking the club over. Why is that?

There are some dark mutterings regarding PKF’s handling of the admin, I will leave that aside for now for others to comment on such as the excellent SJ Maskell has done in her latest blog: http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=21759

But there’s one issue outlined in this narrative where exasperated just doesn’t cut it. Apoplectic probably a better one!

Directly below is an extract from PKF’s document lodged at Companies House recording the vote of creditors passing the proposed CVA on 25/6/12. This Document is dated June 28^th 2012.

Nothing extraordinary there at first glance though some frown-inducing names crop up. Balu Chainrai for instance personally had £350k worth of votes and Portpin had £7.217m worth.

But who the hell are Hiroshima Ltd?

First off your hearts will sink as I tell you they are based in Hong Kong.

Two different firms too under the same name.

One of the Hiroshima Ltd's address is 16F, Yue Hwa International Building, 1 Kowloon Park Drive, Tsim Shai Tsui, Hong Kong. Person of contact is a Raj Kakessery, an independent financial consultant. According to records they are an exporter of light goods'

By a strange quirk of fate that address is the same for Hornington Enterprises Ltd, a familiar name to those following this Pompey saga for the past few years.

Also at this address is Hari Holdings Inc run by Balram's father Parasram . There's a Hari Importers & Exporters Ltd UK company based in London where Balram's brothers Deepak and Anup are directors.

Operating out of this address also are Himz Logistics Ltd (global freight company) and H.Rangel Industries, a known offshoot of Hornington.

The other Hiroshima Ltd is located around the corner at Room 401, 4th Floor, Universal Commercial Building, 69 Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong. This is a licenced moneylender firm. There are no directors listed that I could find.

One of these Hiroshima Ltd's is an entity run by the Chainrais, the other an anonymous moneylending firm with the same name. One of those "Pompey" coincidences, two companies with the same name.

So what has a Hong Kong moneylending firm or/and a light goods exporting firm with the same name got to do with Portsmouth Football Club 2010 ltd?

Take your minds back to Portpin's second spell of PFC ownership between October 2010 and June 2011.

If you will remember the Football league were keeping a tight rein on Pompey’s financial dealings.

Club accounts had to be sent to the Football League for regular checks and Portpin were banned from putting any extra debt or security onto the club.

Portpin also had to provide an interest free overdraft facility which they did to the tune of £1m.

Thanks to the terms of the Football League agreement with the club Portpin had to adhere to those terms or else Pompey's League membership would be forfeited.

Things changed though when CSI first started sniffing around the club at the beginning of February 2011.

As Portpin began negotiations with CSI in the same month they promptly stopped paying bills.

Ben Haim for instance stopped getting his money and his wages tab rose to £2m+ while £2m of other urgent outstanding debts were run up.

So, when CSI eventually took over on June 1^st 2011 and 'invested' their money, about half of it went on paying the bills Portpin had accrued since February.

The overdraft facility Portpin had provided took a hammering in this period and had reached the £1m limit quickly. Portpin’s problem as they saw it was how to get that £1m back out without the Football League noticing which meant devising a scheme not directly related to the Portpin's overdraft facility.

Transpiring events during this period seem to suggest Portpin hit upon the idea of taking out the season ticket money in cash.

At first though Portpin encountered problems with their plan. Barclays Merchant Services at the time didn’t allow the club to have their season ticket money up front because of the fear of the club not completing the season. It was released in equal 1/23rds as each home game was played.

So then Portpin instigated the Cash & Cheque Only Early Bird scheme. But many Pompey fans were wary of Portpin and the Early Bird scheme so it only brought in a relative trickle of money.

Undaunted Portpin apparently then came upon the idea of using Zebra Finance Ltd.

Zebra are a reputable finance company who specialise in providing finance to fans to buy their season tickets - used by Man Utd amongst others. The idea was that Zebra would take credit card payments, advance the money to the club then receive it back from Barclays Merchant Services in 23rds and take a cut.

Barclays realised this was happening and said they wouldn't accept that arrangement for some unspecified legal reasons. Seeing as Pompey had no chance of getting any other merchant services firm to take their business due to the state of the club finances, Barclays could effectively dictate business terms to the club who were powerless to do anything about it.

So Portpin then came up with a sweet variation and it went something like this:

(a) The ST money would continue to arrive in 23rds from the bank but go to Zebra instead.

(b) Zebra, who it must be pointed out innocently thought they were doing PFC itself a good turn, would then send the money minus a small fee not to Pompey but to a finance company called Hiroshima Ltd who would, to all intents and purposes, then forward the money to PFC.

Of course the problem with this latest Portpin wheeze was two-fold;

1. This was actually CSI's and therefore PFC's money that was being taken.

2. More importantly though, it was in direct breach of the club’s FL Membership Agreement. Had the League known about it at the time Pompey would probably have been thrown out of the League.

So, despite warnings from within the club and, sources suggest, Portpin sought legal advice too Portpin went ahead and did it anyway.

Consequently, when CSI came in they found that approx £800k of season ticket money hadn't come into the club as it should have done, it instead went to the unwitting Zebra then to Hiroshima.

Portpin’s devious plan to get back the £1m had almost worked perfectly but not quite in the timescale they had to carry it out fully, no doubt not helped by CSI's plunge into admin.

However, the remaining £200k Portpin obviously haven’t given up on, hence the claim by Hiroshima. The amount of £498k is staggering, 2 ½ times the original amount, another example no doubt of Portpin’s “generous” interest rates on money deals, this time a mindblowing 2,998% - unless there is something else we don't know about!.

Of course this whole sorry episode raises questions;

1. Why did the Football league take until October 2012 to rule out Portpin from owning the club when they were aware of this matter?

2. As CSI administrator, what action has Andronikou taken to recover this £800k or so from Portpin which should belong to CSI/PFC? Alternatively what have PKF done to recover this money that rightfully should be Pompey's?

3. PKF did a preliminary audit on PFC for CSI prior to their takeover. Must have missed this Zebra/Hiroshima deal then.

That oversight could be forgiven as a genuine mistake but PKF haven't done themselves any favours by appearing to have verified an astonishing increase in the amount apparently owed to Hiroshima (from approx £200k to £498k) by allowing them to vote at the 25^th June creditors meeting even though they were not actual creditors of PFC 2010 Ltd, according to the creditors list PKF put out in their April 2012 document. Again, unless there is something else going on besides this issue behind the scenes, the amount is staggering.

For Hiroshima to be a creditor of PFC, they would have had to have offered some services or goods that PFC would have paid a fee for. There's a transaction that needs to occur. In this case it didn't as the Zebra/Hiroshima arrangement was arranged by Portpin themselves, not the football club.

How could PKF have allowed Hiroshima to be creditors of PFC 2010 Ltd?

Zebra weren't aware that the money wasn't reaching the club as after all the arrangement was made with the owners of the club - Portpin - so why would Zebra think there was something untoward?

Hiroshima from this appear to be charging PFC half a million pounds for holding onto approx £800k of PFC money which they have kept anyway. Its like if you have a savings account with a bank and the bank charging you 2/3 of your savings value in charges after first nicking all your money.

How was this allowed to happen by PKF?

The dismay-inducing tale above reminds me so much of Portpin taking the Kaboul transfer money in 2010.

Back then, despite knowing there were untold amount of other creditors out there, despite knowing the club was way behind on paying everyone, despite the fact there were PL rules/legally binding agreements in situ Portpin, when it comes to getting their money, take it anyway they can.

Don't know about you but I am sick and tired of all these strokes, tricks, schemes etc involving Portsmouth Football Club. Roll on the day when the PST run the club properly. Back the PST bid for the good of Pompey.

Portus-Eg All opinions expressed are mine 1/2/13

Pompey Trust Warriors almost there

2012-11-15T05:11:00.001-08:00

Pompey Trust Warriors Almost There 15/11/12

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” A quote from the classic novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

That saying must be true of every Pompey fan, especially those of the Pompey Supporters Trust bid team and we all must be a combination of Rambo, Confucius with a touch of ET thrown in, seeing as Portpin described some Pompey fans as being “from another planet”.

The whole PST bid team must have felt they were writing a modern day version of the lengthy classic novel in the past six months or so and probably felt they were re-enacting the film too as huge dollops of snipe, sneer and ridicule were thrown their way. Admirably they have unwaveringly stuck to their task and full respect to them all for that as well as heartfelt gratitude.

Main protagonists in the unseemly side of the bidding campaign were hat-trick ownership-seeking main rivals Portpin, governed by Balram Chainrai, who have stuck to their shock and stick-in-your-craw tactics and launched several verbal salvos at all and sundry in recent months, the latest a few days ago.

In that latest blast PST were slated as usual for not having enough money and PKF were broadsided once more about their £3m fees making this present PFC 2010 Ltd admin the most expensive admin in English football history.

Probably a true claim if truth be known but Portpin conveniently forgot to add the second most expensive would then more than likely be the preceding Portsmouth FC admin in 2010 which cost more than £2.65m, an admin in which Portpin were involved too.

That’s £5.6m in admin fees alone before any creditor has been paid a single penny of the desultory pittance they have been awarded compared to what they are actually owed.

Thankfully though, in the same statement, Portpin announced they have “suspended” their bid to buy the club, a factor not totally surprising after they received a multi-page missive from the Football League last week informing them as to why it would be highly unlikely Portpin would pass the Fit and Proper test.

So, at 2pm this afternoon, the PST will unveil their long-awaited Share Prospectus, another huge step towards a historic full club ownership. PKF have already agreed the sale of the club to the Trust, conditional to getting the court’s permission to flog Fratton Park seeing as Portpin have predictably refused to accept what they have been offered by the Trust for their debenture.

Things have come a long way since those dreaded days three months ago leading up to the first and still most potent August 10^th deadline day when Tel Ben Haim, Kanu, Kitson and co seemed harder to shift than cat hairs from your wedding suit and liquidation was a real possibility.

Still a way to go yet with Portpin unlikely to exit quietly but potential legal battles have been planned for and will be fought if necessary.

Just how Pompey came to be in their present financial equivalent of a one-armed bloke having a sneezing fit while hanging off a cliff has been brilliantly chronicled on Pompey Fans.Com in recent weeks by Micah Hall, aided and abetted by the impressive SJ Maskell.

The grass roots of justice of what actually happened between October 2009 to February 2010 started to show on Monday of this week when solicitor Mark Jacob’s part in the Falcondrone/Portpin episode was laid bare at the Solicitor Disciplinary Tribunal in London.

It was an unedifying experience where the innards of a large chunk of Pompey’s demise were laid bare and examined in a cold and clinical way in the austere first floor surroundings of Court One.

Words like “shame”, “discomfort” and “embarrassment” were bandied about in mitigation by the defence lawyers like meaningless placebos on behalf of Fugler lawyers David Berens and Bryan Fugler as well as former Pompey director Mark Jacob.

They of course were talking about their own individual position in being in the court itself, not for what they had done at Pompey.

Not once was the word “remorse” used, not once was there a hint of apology for the consequences of their actions at a 114 year-old football club.

In fact, at one point, the Fugler defence lawyer said of Fuglers actions: “there was no real harm done to the creditors”, a staggering statement displaying blithe unawareness at a level approaching Comical Ali status and akin to describing the Boston Strangler as just being a heavy-handed masseuse.

For the full background story read Micah Hall’s recent articles but, in summary, Fuglers client accounts were used as a banking facility when there shouldn’t have been a need to, just as MH said in his blog. Link below:

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/portsmouth/fb_news.php?storyid=18346&title=hall_right_now:_revealed_-_the_true_story_behind_ali_al_faraj

Lucky enough the Tribunal had heard enough to find them all guilty of misconduct, at one point Tribunal Chair Karen Todner said: “It was blatantly obvious that some transactions” made during the period Jacob and Fuglers were involved at the club “were not legal”.

She went on to say the”public would take a dim view” of what had occurred.

Despite those observation though none of the solicitors were struck off and a total of £140k in fines and costs were meted out. Jacob couldn’t believe his luck at his “great result” and scuttled out of the court like a bespoke-suited Usain Bolt.

Paltry in comparison to the amounts we are used to regarding PFC debts but at least it’s a guilty as charged job.

Disappointing was the charge against Jacob of ‘conflict in interest’ was found not proven due mainly to an inadequate submission of the charge as the details were not “particularised” enough by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority – legalese for ‘they cocked it up’.

Disappointing too was the fact Bryan Fugler was in court. He is the founder of the Just Rifles charity for wounded soldiers, one many have an affinity for including myself.

Of course, this being Pompey, Bryan Fugler had a PFC connection of sorts prior to this case as he was the Spurs lawyer at the time Sir Alan Sugar and Pompey ex-chairman Terry Venables were going at it hammer and tongs legalwise in the early and mid1990’s.

Won’t bore you all with the details but lawsuits were flying about between the various parties involved like rampant budgies on a promise with Venables suing Fugler for negligence while Bryan countersued El Tel for costs and Bryan’s brother Jeffrey waded into Venables, suing him for unpaid work regarding El Tel’s Scribes West club in London.

In the end Venables was banned for 7 years from being a director after copping a plea for 19 charges brought by the Department of Trade and Industry and he lost most of his lawsuits too.

Still, he bought Pompey for a quid, sold it for £220k and got a £300,000 bonus from PFC via his Vencorp company following a couple of transfer deals, one including current Havant n Ville boss Lee Bradbury. Nice little profit seeing as he actually came to Fratton Park only on about a dozen occasions in his whole tenure.

Talking of tenures Michael Appleton obviously had had enough of working with both hands tied behind his back and has gone to Blackpool.

Apparently he had more interviews than Oprah Winfrey prior to his departure but the untidy way he left shouldn’t detract from the work he achieved while he was here. Thanks Appy for your efforts.

At the end of my last blog on October 10^th I had hinted at things that would be in this blog regarding questions that has been put to Portpin’s PR company Tavistock ( standard No Comment response by the way).

I apologise for not including the reasons for those questions in this blog. Unfortunately there are litigation proceedings that were already well underway in other countries which I was told may have been compromised by what I could have written.

As soon as I hopefully get the go-ahead to publish I will.

All views expressed are mine Portus-Eg 15/11/12

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Portpin hanging on

2012-10-10T13:41:00.000-07:00

Prising Portpin Off Ain't Easy 10/10/12

Crowbar? JCB? Semtex?

Those are just three of the desperate ways I have thought of that is needed to prise Portsmouth Football Club away forever from the “reluctant” vice-like grip of a certain Mr Balram Chainrai.

I reluctantly wrote off covering him in honey and treacle and then tying him to a tree in a grizzly bear-infested Canadian forest and I also dismissed super gluing headphones to his ears and playing Spice Girls Greatest Hit(s) on a continuous loop.

Probably be easiest just to get him in a locked room one-to-one with Pompey fan and famed blogger Micah Hall who, one can tell these things you know, is not an admirer of the Hong Kong businessman.

Not many “No Comments” would be uttered in that meeting I reckon.

Regular readers of my blog know I unashamedly am backing the Pompey Supporters Trust bid as I feel they would be the best bet to give Portsmouth Football Club a respectable and viable future.

That doesn’t mean I think the Trust bid is perfect. The money is going to be tighter than a pair of Razor Ruddock’s shorts at times but, with a lot of hard work coupled with patience and support from the fan base, I believe the Trust bid can work.

With Chainrai’s bid however I feel it is a different story.

Putting aside Micah Hall’s recent stunning revelations about the Ali Al Faraj era of club ownership and some previous unflattering entries regarding Chainrai in this blog, I believe Chainrai’s desire to make money, by whatever means, overrides any other consideration in his decision-making.

Below is an extract from the May 2010 CVA document put out by the UHY admin team including Andrew Andronikou. I think all Pompey fans know about this as it probably remains the most memorable of Portpin’s broken promises.

“Subject to the approval of the CVA, Portpin Limited has undertaken to pay all unsecured creditors with claims of up to £2,500 in full and to pay any amounts owed to Charitable Organisations in full. Upon repayment, the claims of these creditors will be subrogated to Portpin Limited.”

Having asked a couple of people who know about this type of thing, basically what that means is the small creditors and charities would be paid on behalf of the skint football club and their claims would become Portpin’s debt.

From the same CVA document:

The amount shown owing to Portpin was £14,201,000.

Why the precise amount of £201,000? Why not a round figure like £14m or 14.2m?

By one of those infamous Pompey “coincidences” £201,000 is the amount (bar a few quid under) that the small creditors and charities were owed.

Hmmm. Looks to me like Portpin not only didn’t pay the small creditors and charities, they also had the cheek to add the £201k to the debt they claimed they were owed by the football club, even though they had 481 days of ownership in which to pay up before they sold Pompey to CSI.

After that came a legal battle in which the football club, via then CEO David Lampitt, claimed Portpin should pay the small creditors off.

Portpin said it was the football club’s responsibility to do so and duly won that one.

Portpin though still didn’t cough up the cash even when CSI folded, leaving Portpin in charge of all CSI assets and business affairs via legal charges Portpin had quickly put in place after Antonov’s arrest.

£201k may be a small amount in the train wreck that was Pompey’s ocean of debt but it is still money apparently that was worth plumbing the depths of that ocean for.

Every little helps as they say.

It also may explain just why Chainrai has abandoned all pretence of reluctance and is going for club ownership full on.

If he indeed went to all the trouble of keeping that £201k imagine what he will do to claw back the lost £13.6m on his £18.6m debenture, seeing as the Football League have declared he can only carry forward £5m of it onto the new company running the club.

Chainrai though hasn’t been the only megalomaniacal halo-kissing ex-PFC owner who has poured scorn recently on the Trust’s bid.

Vladimir Antonov, former CSI chief and currently fighting extradition to Lithuania where he and a banking colleague face fraud charges in excess of half a billion pounds, spouted off on Twitter at the end of last month.

“With all my resp! robbed by Lithuania and before invested 11.8m. IF PST WILL GET IT! Everybody will be fucked in next 6 months. know cashflow.

Play UP! Some luck and proper owner will get back Pompey on track! But thanks to Trevor and PST that we are still in the deep shit,” he classily tweeted.

Antonov squinnying about cash shortages after what he has been accused of is like Sweeney Todd moaning the new razor blades you bought him were too blunt to cut your throat with.

Since his hasty Pompey departure in November 2011 Antonov has bobbed in out of London’s High Court like a Russian cosmonaut on a Space Hopper, denying everything. The next hearing about his extradition is in January 2013.

Quite how he is surviving in one of his two London mansions seeing as all his assets (£440m) were frozen by the London court in May this year God only knows.

Perhaps the Latvian authorities know too, seeing as they asked last month nine countries worldwide for their legal assistance in seizing the rest of Antonov’s assets.

Latvia and Lithuania are currently locked in immoral combat to get their hands on Antonov’s cash to pay back the shafted creditors of Antonov’s bankrupt banks Krajbanka and Snoras.

An example of the many types of charges facing Antonov is where his Cyprus-based outfit Bandiron Corporation Ltd bought the new Krajbanka HQ off its builder Red Projekts SIA for £7.6m and then allegedly sold it to his own bank Snoras for just under £30m, thereby it’s claimed making Antonov more than £20m on the deal.

Antonov hasn’t taken his arrest and seizure of his banks lying down though, he has recently filed a lawsuit suing the Lithuanian Ministry of Finance for £450m.

This case is scheduled to be heard in New York next year, a case Antonov said recently “would take years”.

I hope the Legal Aid Mr Antonov gets in fighting his extradition in this country doesn’t apply to the New York case too.

As a final aside, during the research I did on Chainrai’s presence in the Baltic regions I was amazed at the various descriptions of our beloved Balu by the local media.

In some media outlets he was from Bengal, in others he was from Bangladesh, one even said he was related to the Nepalese royal family but almost all stated that Chainrai was a Kurd which helped in his dealings with fellow Kurd Zelimkhan Mutsoev, a Tblisi-born political heavyweight in the region (see last blog entry for further detail of their dealings).

Chainrai a Kurd? Slight typo error there I think.

If you want to read Micah Hall’s excellent “Truth About Ali Al Faraj Part One” click on link below:

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/portsmouth/fb_news.php?storyid=18346

If you want to read “Part Two Truth About Ali Al Faraj” click link below:

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/portsmouth/fb_news.php?storyid=18360

In my next blog….

Micah Hall very kindly lobbed into his 100 questions to ask Portpin Part 6 the following questions for me:

56. Is it true Mr Chainrai has been an investor in World Carnival Ltd for the past eight years? Portpin declined to comment.

57. How long has Mr Chainrai known Simon and Avram Ttroshvilla? Portpin declined to comment.

58. Did Mr Chainrai sell all of his 50% share in Rus International LLC to Zelimkhan Mutsoev or was it half of his half (ie, 25% of Rus)? Portpin declined to comment.

59.Is it true Mr Chainrai is the major secured creditor of Great City Global Attractions Ltd and has seized their assets including the Liverpool, York and Plymouth ferris wheels? Portpin declined to comment.

60. Is it true Mr Chainrai is the major financier of Freij Entertainment Ltd based in Dubai and for how long has he known a Mr Freij El Zein the proprietor? Portpin declined to comment.

Nothing defamatory there you would say? So why the blanket “decline to comment” answer from Portpin?

It’s a shame they did that really because I would really like to know if they had answered why a triple-pronged lawsuit totalling £14m was issued against…...(to be continued)

Portus-Eg 10/10/12 All views expressed are mine

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Pompey Bidders Bundle In

2012-09-21T16:22:00.001-07:00

Pompey Bidders Bundle In 21/9/12

Six bidders.

Five points.

Yep, probably for the first time in its football history, Portsmouth Football Club has more people wanting to buy it than it has league points.

And what a motley crew they are too. If Walt Disney Studio wanted inspiration for the next cartoon character film they need look no further than the array of prospective Portsmouth FC buyers.

First there’s Balram “Dick Dastardly” Chainrai, the world’s most persistent reluctant wannabe football club owner along with his faithful sidekick Levi “Muttley” Kushnir who might have the last laugh after all.

Then there’s Sulaiman “Tweetie Pie” Al Fahim, the Arab Ernest Hemingway wannabe who conducts his business affairs via Twitter and who fucked off on safari days before the bid deadline despite saying he had prepared his bid for months to buy Pompey. During his preparation he apparently had somehow forgotten a minor detail like opening an UK bank account to buy a UK business. How remiss of him.

Quickly on the scene too was Laurence “Foghorn Leghorn” Bassini/Bazini, the name-changing former staff-sacking Watford chairman. I say no way there boy, I say no way there.

Next of course there’s the Pompey “Tin Tin” Trust, who have fought off more dangers and obstacles than Herge could ever have thought of to still be in there more doggedly than Snowy scrapping for club ownership.

Don’t forget there is Scotsman Henry “The Coyote” Kerr and his last-minute Portco bid. As Coyote in catching the Roadrunner it looks like it is too late a bid for this mob anyway, never mind the unfortunate close company name to Portpin and the past link to previous futile budding bidder Tom Lever.

The sixth bidder, announced Friday morning, remains anonymous though rumours suggest it’s a consortium put together by Pompey’s ex-CEO Peter “Elmer Fudd” Storrie. That “pesky wabbit” just about sums him up!

Like I have mentioned previously in this blog the fact that Sacha Gaydamak’s land is now up for grabs and will in all probability be included in the deal has suddenly attracted a whole raft of newly-converted Pompey lovers.

As it happens I believe the only two bids still in serious contention are the fan-backed Pompey Trust and Portpin, led by dual ex-club owner Balram Chainrai.

Portpin’s latest statement was a marked change from their previous outpourings. It was cohesive, reasonable and, more dangerously, believable to those fed-up fans who don't know or care about the background to this entire affair and just want to support their team.

It offered plenty but no actual detail. Bit like a Fry’s Turkish Delight, full of Eastern promise but still tasting like hair gel on Ryvita.

Some of the highlights:

1/ A multi-million pound overdraft – paid back by the club of course plus interest – in other words, more debt.

2/ Portpin to wipe out most of their £18.6m debenture value – as specified anyway by the Football League in their conditions for the Newco running the club – in other words, Portpin carry forward the £5m the maximum the League said they can.

3/ Pay off the unsecured AND football creditors – a first for Portpin if they do - as per Trust bid anyway.

4/ No more short-term contracts for players – erm, anything surely is longer than the one-month ones they are on now?

Also slapped in there was the usual “fantastic fans” platitudes and the desire to make Pompey a community club but basically it was the same spin but written by a true pro. Hats off to whoever that was.

Portpin also poked the Trust in the eye by using Pompey community radio station Express FM as their chosen outlet instead of Sky Sports to release their statement. That’s like building a Drug Rehab unit in Colombia.

But the most noticeable thing about the statement to me was nowhere was the word “reluctant” mentioned or hinted at. Instead Portpin said they were “committed” to buying and turning around PFC.

So, why the complete U-turn in Portpin’s attitude?

As referred to above, Sacha’s land probably being in the deal opens up a whole new world for property developers in particular. As both Chainrai and Kushnir are.

Land renting, co-builds, the whole works in a city short of premium building space. Tasty stuff.

To me Chainrai has always had that at the back of his mind, hence the continuing presence since May 2011 (just before the PFC sale to CSI) on the board of Miland Developments Ltd (Mandaric’s old PFC parent company) of Sudarshan Kumar.

Kumar, a 38-year-old Hong Kong resident just like Chainrai, also runs Himi Electronics in Moscow and other places including Kiev in the Ukraine.

The address of his Kiev branch is an interesting one, its 4 Hospital Street, Room 316, Kyiv 01023.

That in fact is the Hotel Rus, a hotel previously owned by Chainrai using his Banita, Maslav and Himilita limited companies in the UK.

Kumar was also secretary of the Banita, Maslav and Himilita companies during the time Chainrai owned the hotel plus Kiev’s sprawling Metropolis and Metrograd shopping centres.

The hotel changed ownership in spectacular style on November 26^th 2006 by virtue of the Ukraine version of “Corporate Raiding”.

That phrase in our Western eyes means a hostile takeover where one company buying out an unwilling company’s shares.

In the Ukraine, Russia and other similar countries however Corporate Raiding is taken literally where armed police/ private militia/ government troops storm a property or occupy land and claim ownership.

Bit like a reverse Robin Hood thing if you like, stealing from the rich to give to the even richer.

It’s been a common occurrence for years in Russia and its old satellite countries since the break-up of the old Soviet Union though steps are being taken nowadays by the Ukrainian authorities to curb it though sometimes it seems some government officials were, and still are, the beneficiaries of “corporate raiding”.

In the case of Hotel Rus it appears this was the case. It was one of Ukraine’s first raids of its kind.

Chainrai’s fellow co-owner of Hotel Rus was the now-notorious local entrepreneur Mstislav Skorobogatov, whom Chainrai had mentored after Skorobogatov had joined his Rus International llc company in 1995 as a goods loader and later his interpreter.

At that time Chainrai was already established in Russia and the Baltic states in the early post-soviet era and was making a killing by selling his electrical goods including the Scarlett brand as well as the more well-known Japanese and western brands.

As Skorobogatov learnt the electronics trade Chainrai at first funded and then arranged loans from Pivdenny, Nadra and Tas-Invest banks for him to set up his own independent business interests.

Skorobogatov did just that. His first firm was “Dusky” and he went on from there to open up more of his own businesses including the companies Kureni, City of Glory and Misto Glory which led eventually to the co-ownership with Chainrai of the Hotel Rus and the shopping centres amongst other properties.

But, as Skorobogatov grew more powerful Chainrai became more wary.

A couple of Skorobogatov’s own separate business partners, including A Daineka who had been his initial partner in Dusky, had been bumped off and Chainrai perhaps wisely didn’t set foot in Kiev for years as a result.

Skorobogatov became Dusky’s sole owner after Daineka’s death and a million dollars richer too.

Money still flowed from Chainrai to Skorobogatov to expand their joint business empire but Chainrai grew more and more agitated as the hotels and shopping centres fell into various states of disrepair, posted mounting losses and staff not being paid.

Finally he accused Skorobogatov of financial mismanagement – in other words, where’s my money gone?

Part of the answer could have been that Skorobogatov was caught flogging unlicenced Sony,Toshiba and Sharp electrical products with components supplied by Chainrai in 2003 and Skorobogatov also got done for illegally selling the Japanese electrical goods brand Shivaki via his Type R factory in 2006 but somehow escaped criminal prosecution. It is not clear whether Chainrai knew of any of this when supplying the components.

Skorobogatov once offered to buy out Chainrai in 2005 but Chainrai’s asking price was too high and relations between the two got more strained and threats were apparently made to Chainrai’s staff.

In late 2006 Chainrai finally lost patience and sold, without telling Skorobogatov, his 50% stake in the hotels and shopping centres to Zelimkhan Mutsoev, at that time a deputy of the State Duma (government) and wealthy owner of the Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant.

Some reports say Chainrai only sold half of his 50% which would have made Mutsoev a third partner but most do state 50%.

Mutsoev, like so many Russian oligarchs, hadn’t got his considerable wealth in the post-soviet era by being a shy and retiring desk jockey.

Amidst the usual accusations of fraud, theft and threats that are thrown at every Russian oligarch includes the well-publicised claim he had stolen the 0.6% share, worth £250m, in the Silvinit industrial corporation off fellow oligarch Anatoly Lomakin. Nothing has ever been proven though.

Mutsoev’s younger brother Amirkhan knew Chainrai from their past business dealings where Chainrai had supplied electrical goods to him too.

Zelimkhan Mutsoev didn’t waste any time and sent in his business ‘associates’ to the Hotel Rus and took it over in November 2006.

By corporate raiding standards in these parts it was quite a demure takeover (see youtube links below) but a trail of broken glass, busted locks and 200 frightened hotel guests was left afterwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPAvpjGthp4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiHh7UNTOVc&feature=related

Skorobogatov was fuming as Mutsoev promptly declared he was a new partner in his hotel and shopping centres and it led inevitably to Skorobogatov being booted out of his own hotel.

He also lost his other hotels in Kiev, the Lybid and Slavuvitch plus the hotel Youth in Odessa and the World in Holosievo. To add insult to injured pride he also was ousted from the Metrograd and Metropolis shopping centres ownership.

Since then Skorobogatov and his new Jordanian business partner Bani Nasser Abdullah have fought many legal battles, including a £250m claim in the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, to get his property back including the Hotel Rus amongst others.

He also accused heavyweight Russian veteran parliamentarian Alexander Babakov of being involved in the Hotel Rus takeover via his VS Energy group.

Both Babakov and Mutsoev have flatly denied Skorobogatov’s claims.

Skorobogatov also has resorted to trying to take back some of the property he had owned and lost by doing his own bit of corporate raiding at times.

For instance, he used his own private militia to storm the Kiev Metrograd shopping centre in May 2009 but beat a hasty retreat when the Ukrainian Army’s elite Golden Eagle (Berkut) squad appeared at the scene.

Skorobogatov claimed that Chainrai had ignored him and the shareholder meetings he had arranged to discuss their partnership expansion plans and he denied Chainrai put any more money into their partnership after Chainrai’s initial cash injection to get Skorobogatov started years before.

He also claimed that false court documents were used in the seizure of the Hotel Rus, a charge levelled back at him by police after his abortive 2009 raid on the Metrograd.

Months afterwards it was discovered by local journalists that a Bahamas firm Deblin International Ltd were behind the Hotel Rus raid. Mutsoev’s closest aide Kamal Chugani fronted that firm and Elena Morey, wife of Amirkhan Mutsoev, was one of the beneficiaries.

Buying Pompey must be like a gentle stroll to Balram Chainrai after his mauling in The Urals.

Oh, one last thing, on the last submitted Annual Return of Miland Developments Ltd dated 4^th March 2011 it still shows Fratton Park as its address. It also shows Al Fahim Asia Associates having 10% of the company shares and Balram Chainrai as still having 90%.

Why keep these shares on?

Portus Eg 21/9/12 all views expressed are mine

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Doctor Who? returns to Pompey

2012-09-12T15:23:00.001-07:00

This time I mean it – Honest!! 12/9/12

We’ve all heard of Ronseal – you know – “It does what it says on the tin”.

Now there’s a new product aimed at the English football market called “Conspiel” – “It never does what it says on the tin” - launched for a second time by a dubious Dubai-based outfit.

Yep, you’ve guessed it, Sulaiman Al Fahim is back on the Pompey scene folks, larger than life and twice as fat and far-fetched.

When I first heard the rumour that the fake doctor was in line to front a bid last week my heart sank like a Fred West front room floorboard but I hoped the rumour was as false as a T-Girl’s period.

After all, the very day the Al Fahim news broke publicly we had won 3-0 at Crawley, our first league win following a gritty win midweek against Bournemouth in the Johnstone’s Trophy so things were cautiously bumbling along nicely with the Pompey Fans Trust seemingly in pole position with their bid to take-over the club and everyone pleasantly stunned at McLeod scoring too.

But alas, as I should have known, this is Pompey and things are never that clear-cut.

Amazingly there are a few Pompey fans who seem willing to give the chubby chancer a second bite of the cherry. That’s like texting a hit and run driver to reverse back over you as you were still conscious.

It worries me that some of Pompey fans’ memories are that short or selective or more of a case of “Arab = money”.

After all, Al Fahim claimed he had a doctorate which was quickly dismissed by the Brit press as false.

After all, Al Fahim was the bloke who said he would put £50m into the club within a month.

After all, Al Fahim was responsible, by not forking out any of the £60m of what he said he would pay for the club, for Sacha Gaydamak grabbing the land surrounding Fratton Park, an issue we are dearly paying for now.

After all, despite having no dosh, Al Fahim oversaw the signing of several players with costs running into millions of pounds, including the well-loved Tal Ben Haim.

There were other outlandish events and claims made by SAF, including being an ambassador for the UN-backed charity IIMSAM amongst other things.

Trouble is, Al Fahim is the proverbial lovable rogue. He has a charm and a wit about him. He name- drops like a one-armed postman and is photographed constantly with visibly taken-aback celebrities.

His well-documented business dealings though don’t bear up to his platinum-tongued waffle.

For instance, trouble with the Hydra Estates project led to his removal as its CEO. Questions were raised and an Interpol Red Notice issued over his £1.4m Al Buraq and Ghantoot Star General Trading Ltd property deal which led to his well-publicised “detaining” at an empty, disinterested and arrest warrant-free Dubai airport.

Even the TV show Hydra Executives, the Arab version of ‘The Apprentice’, in which Al Fahim was the Alan Sugar-type mentor, was a total cock up with Al Fahim trying to wangle a few quid which wasn’t his.

In that show the winner was supposed to coin a cool $1m dollars. It turned out there were two co-winners and one, Hannah Dodkin, sued the other, Richard Best, in an American court earlier this year for not handing over half the cash as agreed.

Al Fahim initially handed one of the winners, Richard Best, who was recalled after earlier being voted off the show, a $100,000 cheque but only if it was made payable to the charity of which Al Fahim said he was ambassador for! Best finally got his money in full from His Highness Sheikh Tahnoon.

Then there was the farce of Al Fahim’s resignation as Pompey chairman. He stated his resignation was a “private and confidential” matter yet he provided literally within hours a copy of his resignation letter to none other than Anil Bhoyrul, editor of the Arabian Business magazine, who promptly published it for all the world to see.

That’s like Joey Barton denying he had a lobotomy but inviting you to touch the scar.

All these things, and more, has permanently damaged the club and its fans.

That’s the reason I don’t want him anywhere near Portsmouth Football Club again. Nor Balram Chainrai nor anyone connected with that infamous era which has left the club a sickly caricature of itself.

I believe with the right owners that the club can fully recover in time but a return of either Fahim or Portpin will see the death rattle become deafening and final.

You would think Al Fahim would have learnt his lesson after his ignominious Fratton exit and previous business failings but apparently not.

His firm, Al Fahim Investment Group, has been flagged on the “Linked In” professional executive website as being alleged scammers.

It appears Al Fahim is supposedly using this site as a way of business opportunities. As many posters on that site forum have pointed out, it isn’t the way bona fide investors work.

“The official investment companies receive thousands of proposals for investment from all around the world and they will never go look for potential customers in LinkedIn.

Do not waste your time and nerves with the crooks in this site. Perhaps the link below will help you. Good luck!” one wrote a month ago, a typical response of many.

A Bulgarian poster posted a response a few weeks ago that he had from Al Fahim, listing a proposal offering a multimillion euro loan at 5% interest but that a 3% deduction of the loan total from a reputable UAE insurance company (in reported cases it has been Swift Middle East Insurance, well known to the Dubai FSA) as a security collateral would be made when the deal happened. This deal would happen if the company was sent a refundable binding deposit (from $20k upwards).

Hmmm. Totally gobsmacked the address Al Fahim gave wasn’t in Nigeria to be honest.

To be fair Sulaiman Al Fahim has said the website referred to by the Linked In forum posters was fake and had nothing to do with him.

“sorry you contacted the wrong person, its a SCAM http://www.alfahiminvestment.com & http://www.alfahiminvestmentgroup.com are nothing to do with me, FRAUD” Fahim said in a Twitter conversation to a querying Linked In member on the 25^th June this year.

He added the same day that Dubai Police had been informed but, as to date almost three months later, the website is still up and running with a glowing bio of Al Fahim:

http://www.alfahiminvestment.com/

The alfahiminvestment.com website is a bit iffy too with its IP address being in…the British Virgin Islands, a place all too familiar to Pompey fans.

Also, the equally-vilified firm on the same Linked In forum of Al Ghandi Investment Group not only share the same wording as the Al Fahim mailshots to potential punters but they also share the same address at 235 Sheikh Zayed Road, PO Box 8612, Dubai.

Another one of those famous Pompey “coincidences”.

Al Fahim’s, or should I say the bidder he is representing, latest bid seems a good one on paper, again released through the Arabian Business magazine.

Both Chainrai and Al Fahim seem to have their favourite media mouthpieces.

The offer includes a seat on the club board for the Trust for the sake of transparency, a good PR move but akin to watching a naked Cameron Diaz eating a banana in a sealed room if the other members of the board can outvote or veto any Trust involvement or suggestion.

Also Fahim, who has coquettishly refused to admit it is him despite fierce questioning from the likes of Pompey fan Mike Hall and others, says the bidder will pay off the football creditors, pay off the CVA and bung £500k in share capital into the club.

He also added in his bid letter he would see about buying Sacha’s land off Miland 2004 Ltd, an aspect he had highlighted on the 11^th July on his twitter profile when he reweeted The News story about the land being up for grabs.

Funny how this bit of land being put up for sale has attracted more bountyhunters than Clint Eastwood - Portpin, Bassini, now Fahim. Don't know about the The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, more of a case of See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil.

Fahim says he is in the process today of transferring the £12.78m which he says will clear all the clubs’ debts (equity loan?) with from a Dubai Bank account to an UK bank account. You would have thought he would have an account here wouldn’t you, seeing as he has conducted business here before and boasts of global investing?

And why did Fahim leave it so late to announce the bid? It’s not like this PFC takeover process has recently started.

The long-running Pompey takeover saga continues, a decision is expected tomorrow from admin man Trevor Birch of PKF on the successful bidder. Let’s hope it’s the Pompey “Ronseal” Trust.

Portus=Eg 12/9/12 all views expressed are mine.

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Pompey's Rocky road to recovery

2012-09-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

Punch Drunk Portpin Rockying 3/9/12

Like a scene from the film Rocky the Pompey ‘Balboa’ Trust is slugging it out toe to toe for club ownership against ‘Apollo Creed’ Portpin.

Just like cocky champ Creed in the film Portpin, former owner Balram Chainrai’s outfit, had for so long badly underestimated the power of the fan-based Pompey Trust (Balboa-like peoples champions).

Long gone are the contemptuous and dismissive Portpin gestures like asking the Trust to prove they had the silly sum of £100m when the Trust first showed interest in buying the club.

Instead, as the Trust bid gained momentum and day-by-day became more real, Portpin have resorted to a series of increasingly panicky and wild roundhouse statements, including a withdrawal, a wholesale condemnation of Pompey fans, manager and basically anything that was coloured blue plus a bid re-renewal after a knockdown.

The Trust has been dignity personified in contrast, quietly jabbing away at their business and ignoring the blatant Portpin propaganda which at times bordered on the hysterically funny. Not so much a Lord Haw Haw, more a case of Baron Guffaw Guffaw.

The stage was set for the final round last Friday when Trevor Birch, of admin mob PKF, was set to announce the winner on points.

As this is Pompey however an anti-climax was inevitable, Birch lamely said the bidders had a further two weeks to sign the sales contracts he had issued to both. This left Pompey fans with the similar feeling you get on finding out Motorhead listened to Val Doonican cd’s in their spare time.

The Trust are currently in talks with local property developer Stuart Robinson and have a series of meetings with other prospective investors lined up to further strengthen their bid so their non-signing was of no real surprise but what was the reason Portpin didn’t sign their contract there and then?

Having slagged off the Trust to the hilt about their lack of cash less than a day before the Friday deadline, it makes you wonder why Portpin didn’t clinch the deal if they are as minted as they say they are.

Perhaps the news that the Trust had upped their game and matched the offer to the Football Creditors by agreeing to pay the £8.4m player payoff, just like Portpin had, over four years had dampened their ardour somewhat.

Add to that the Trust’s clearly saying what they were going to do with the parachute payments as opposed to Portpin’s muteness over the same issue, the Trust’s offer to the creditors and their declared intent to stabilise the club then it becomes apparent that Portpin weren’t thinking on the same wavelength as the Trust about the club’s welfare at all.

Discussions have been ongoing for a while about the stadium. Chainrai had offered to rent the ground at £100,000 a month (£1.2m a year) to the Trust, a staggeringly stupid amount for a League 1 club to find.

Robinson’s offer is apparently to buy the stadium and parts of Sacha’s land. Then it’s said he would rent FP to the Trust at somewhere below £200,000 a year rent with a guaranteed right-to-buy option of FP to the Trust after three to five years at a mutually agreed fixed price.

This rent apparently includes access to the car park behind the Fratton End, where the club presently forks out £72k a year to Sacha Gaydamak for the privilege of using it. I don’t know if Portpin’s offer includes the same access cost.

Some fans have expressed concerns about a property developer being involved but, if the ground is to be developed and improved, then sooner or later a property firm will have to come on board.

Better it be now with a developer the Trust know along with a cast-iron agreement in consultation with the Portsmouth City Council than a chancer coming into proceedings later.

Portpin though are not finished yet in my opinion. They are like that annoying damp patch in your bathroom that always comes back no matter how often you treat it or paint it over.

Chainrai has publicly said he wants his money back, an unrealistic idea but he is stubbornly refusing to face the truth that he has lost most of what he claims he is owed, like a kid who finds out the Tooth Fairy only accepts Visa nowadays.

There could be the possibility of a false buyer in true Falcondrone style coming in to confuse and delay things, whether in for Sacha’s land, the stadium or both. Delays cost money and time, two ingredients not included in the Trust’s carefully-measured cake mix.

As for the Trust's improved offer, a lot will depend on what deal with an investor they come up with, whether it's with Robinson or whoever. Their football creditor payoff from £2m to £8.4m over four years surprised me as thats an extra £6.4m to find. I reckon there could be more renegotiating with the players in a couple of years time after a fair bulk of that debt has been paid off.

On the field Saturday was a disappointing loss to Oldham, courtesy of an own goal by debutant Johnny Ertl. The performance was patchy, mainly due to the tireless closing down by the Oldham team, hell-bent on stopping our flow. Fat bastard ex-canary Robert Croft pulled the strings for the northern outfit but he was afforded too much space from our tired-looking midfield.

As our squad has only been together for a fortnight it would be unfair to criticise out manager Michael Appleton who has performed miracles up to now in even getting a team out. It’s clear he wants his team to get it on the deck and play football but whether he can afford the quality of players needed to carry out his ideaology is another matter.

Come November I think there will be a marked improvement in the level of our performances and I feel we will just escape relegation. The fact we are still going is a cause for celebration, imagine the party if we stay in this division.

Talking of escaping relegation I see our beloved neighbours once again spectacularly blew a 2-1 lead, this time at home against a below-par Man Utd in the last five minutes (or NorrisTime as its known in Pompey).

To be fair the horse-fanciers played well but the habit of conceding goals (8 in 3 games) is a nasty one to develop and I feel they will struggle all season. Having spent more than £20m on improving their attacking options perhaps manager Nigel Adkins ought to have spent more strengthening their defence.

As readers of my blog will have noticed I did point out recently about the possibility of SFC becoming the ATM cash machine amongst other things for their ultimate parent company, the Swiss-based Mali Group conglomerate.

That idea took a step closer last week when Nicola Cortese, SFC chairman, became the sole director of all of the Mali companies as Katherina Liebherr and her fellow directors stepped down to leave the Chilworth-based chief holding the entire bag of Mali and Scum goodies.

It means Cortese is now sole director of a dozen companies at Mali and SFC subsidiaries including the club’s UK parent company DMWSL 613 Ltd. If I were a scummer I would be more than a little concerned that one man, who has little or no accountability on making company policy or budget decisions, holds all the power.

More from the Dark Side of Hampshire, Anthea Thorpe, of Millbrook in Southampton, has become a new cult heroine to the residents of Pompey.

Mrs Thorpe is the wife of Southampton councillor Asa Thorpe and she was accused on Saturday in their local rag the Daily Echo of labelling, via the newspapers’ reader forum, the city’s residents as “cretins”, “bigoted” and “inbred”.

We in Pompey knew this all along but it is nice to get confirmation from one of their own.

Not so sure though about the newspaper disclosing the identity of one of their forum posters as Mrs Thorpe had launched her tirade under a nom de plume.

Makes a mockery of any privacy laws and probably the Data Protection Act too so Pompey fans, be wary of calling Chainrai a thieving sneaky loan shark next time you post something in a forum.

Portus-Eg 3/9/12 all views expressed are mine

Pompey Trust's bid bombed

2012-08-31T11:32:00.001-07:00

Balu Bombs Trust Bid 31/8/12

“There are no American troops in Baghdad”.

I expect plenty of you remember laughing out loud at those classic self-denial words uttered in 2003 by Iraqi Information minister Al-Sahhaf, better known as Comical Ali, as two American Abrams tanks and a swarm of Yank troops flooded into view behind his left shoulder.

Balram Chainrai, of would-be Pompey buyer Portpin Ltd, is presently having his own Comical Ali (Al Faraj) moment, inducing a similar outburst of guffaws in the PO postcode area.

“There is no viable Pompey Trust bid on the table” was the panic-stricken self-denial theme prominent in his desperate statement released as a response to the open letter sent by two Pompey MP’s Penny Mordaunt and Mike Hancock asking Chainrai to accept the fan-backed Pompey Trust bid.

Chainrai’s sense of reality is now taking on Walter Mitty-like proportions. From reluctance to hissy fit, from club-loving to Pompey fan slagging, the whole range of Chainrai’s emotions have been publicly exhibited.

This latest offering from Portpin delivered more of the same mixture of unbalanced reasoning and wishful thinking:

From the obvious: “Firstly, Portpin Limited are not selling the club. It is the administrators of the club who are in charge of the sale process” – No shit Sherlock. Scotland Yard missed out out on one there eh?

To the sublime: The PST have to convince the administrators that their bid is the best offer on the table for creditors. In doing so, they also have to convince The Football League that their bid is viable. The PST have failed to do that to date.” – Proof that they haven’t convinced them is…?

To the ridiculous: "Portpin do have the club's best interests at heart and will not agree to a sale to a party who has no ability to fund the club going forward. Portpin have invested a substantial amount of money in the club and should receive a fair value for that investment.” – Evidence including administrations, relegations, three lots of point deductions and not one penny paid of your last CVA strongly suggests otherwise, never mind the question of whether Portpin actually put all the money they said they did in the first place. With no properly audited accounts available for inspection, how can anyone tell?

The statement was full of similar scattergun utterings, at one stage Portpin bafflingly challenging the Portsmouth City Council to produce evidence that a Supporters’ Trust bid had ever been successful.

That’s like asking Barclays why your team didn't win the Premiership last year.

The last time I looked it was the Pompey Supporters Trust that was bidding, not the council but I am sure there are several examples the Trust could oblige the “reluctant” rattled rotundarian with.

“In short, there are no positives to the PST offer whether from Portpin's or the club's view.” Hmm, that’s more to the point Mr Chainrai; the Trust offer for your debenture isn’t to your liking is it?

Amongst what was not to Pompey fans liking in Portpin’s statement were the following:

· No mention either of what use Portpin would make of the remaining £11.6m Parachute Payments.

· No business plan issued, never mind any notion of a five or ten year plan for the stabilising and redevelopment of the club.

· No indication as to PFC manager Michael Appleton’s job prospects following a recent spat.

· No inkling of a likely player budget.

· No news of any possible stadium, training ground, academy or infrastructure improvement at all.

· No mention bar the PST of the fans, some of whom he sees as “living on another planet”.

· No reference to any improved offer to unsecured creditors nor any reason as to why Portpin is offering a four-year CVA and pay-the-players plan as opposed to the Trust’s two-year everyone-gets-paid suggestion.

Basically it was yet another cock-eyed and ill-tempered rant from the petulant Portpinian then.

And, given the fact Birch declared this evening that neither the Trust nor Portpin themselves were in a position at the moment to take over then Chainrai's harsh one-eyed criticism ought to be addressed to Portpin's own bid as well.

Chainrai’s surly outlook was no doubt not improved by this morning’s news that the Trust is having exploratory talks with a local wealthy property developer about him coming into the action.

The idea is for the developer buying the ground and part of Sacha’s land and leasing it to the Trust/club until such time as they could afford to buy it outright.

This partnership idea, if it goes ahead, would then release much-needed short-term funds for the Trust and could mean there would be no need to go cap in hand to the City Council for a loan, thereby increasing the viability of the Trust bid even further.

Stuart Robinson, a 43 year-old property developer from Upham in Southampton, is believed to be the gentleman who has provisionally offered to buy the stadium and lease it back to the Trust until they are in a position to buy it outright.

As most of our recent owners have loosely classed themselves as “property developers” there is understandably a certain amount of scepticism about the news but Robinson was apparently brought into the fray by erstwhile PFC chairman and Trust member Iain McInnes so there’s grounds for true optimism that it’s genuine and could work.

Robinson currently has 13 directorships in active companies with Hackberry Developments UK Ltd being the most notable. He has a variety of businesses including a conference firm and a finance company.

He is a very good sailor in his spare time, having finished second in the Zero IRC class at the recent Cowes Week.

Yacht racing is not a cheap pastime and Robinson has had custom-made yachts built for him by the one of the few firms who build the Americas Cup boats so it’s fair to say he’s probably not short of a bob or two but, like any other sensible businessman, he will only get his feet wet if it's worthwhile to him.

Robinson’s cordial talks with the Trust are still ongoing and can now carry on for an extra two weeks to finalise matters and add weight to the Trust bid. If this juicy idea gets squashed then the Trust apparently has other flavourable options available.

Talking of other options Michael Appleton’s whirlwind wheeling and dealing in getting players in and out is making Redknapp look like a Sinclair C5 up against a Porsche 911.

Johnny Ertl and Darel Russell and the highly-rated Josh Thompson are the latest to come in while Kevin Djailil and Sam Magri are out.

The latter departure has caused a bit of unrest among some Pompey fans but Appleton has bluntly stated there was no room for local lad Magri in his first team this season so better he try his luck elsewhere at QPR rather than wait for Magri’s potential to become a possible reality at Fratton.

The harsh facts of Pompey’s chronic financial situation laid bare.

Summary

The game is still very much on though Birch has said tonight neither Portpin nor the Trust is in a position to take over as yet and each has a fortnight to get it right.

Newspaper reports also cite Birch as saying the Trust bid is slightly favoured at the moment. I hope this are right. Portpin still has a stranglehold and will be hard to shift still but with more investors showing an interest in what the Trust idea represents, the less appeal a Portpin ownership makes to fans who long for the final disappearance of those responsible for the mess we are in.

To me it's only natural that developers will be attracted to a valuable piece of land in a crowded inner city location. As long as the Trust, if they succed in taking over, get reliable legal assurances as to the outcome of any deals they make with any suitable developers then I cannot see the problem.

The spare land will be built on sooner or later, whether it be a supermarket, civic offices or whatever. As long as the football club is protected and developed too at the same time then there is no reason why a joint expansion plan cannot work around Fratton Park for the benefit of all concerned.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the council heavily involved in the process. After all, it's part of their remit to look after the community and Portsmouth Football Club is a large part of that community.

Portus-Eg 31/8/12 all opinions expressed are mine

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Pompey Takeover saga jaws to a close

2012-08-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

A Shark’s Tale 29/8/12

There are 94 species of sharks that dwell in the South China Sea.

We at Pompey have identified for marine biologists a ninety fifth, first spotted three years ago off England’s south coast but known to have originated in Hong Kong, namely the Horribilus Gittus, more commonly known as the loan shark or Balu Chainrai for short.

Yep, the portly Portpin proprietor is back on the Pompey takeover scene, days after withdrawing his bid in a spectacular “nobody loves me” hissy fit.

The news Portpin were “reluctantly” applying yet again to buy the club brought a collective groan in the PO postcode area worthy of a group orgy porn film ending.

All the excitement generated amongst Pompey fans by the Portpin withdrawal, shown by the bumper 18k crowd against Bournemouth and the loud blue army who witnessed the entertaining 2-2 draw at Colchester, melted away like Michael Jackson’s nose a week ago when Portpin announced their new bid.

The fact that the fans’ very own Pompey Trust’s revised bid was due in last Friday morning I’m sure had nothing to do with Portpin’s fresh bid delivered late last Wednesday night, thereby giving little time for a response from anybody else.

Chainrai claimed in justifying his government-style U-Turn that the admin outfit PKF, Portsmouth City Council and the Professional Footballers’ Association all wanted Portpin to reapply, a Pinocchio-style claim roundly denied by all the three parties mentioned.

His new bid doesn’t seem to differ from Portpin’s original one, barring the emphasis the player settlements would be honoured in full (£8.4m), Portpin also snidely highlighted the Trust’s £2m offer to the players as “problematic”.

Portpin’s proposed CVA is due to run for 4 years, with the players being paid up in full over that period (4 x £2.1m). The Sky parachute payments end after two years so I am not quite sure how the club will be able to afford to pay the player settlements after that. Why doesn’t Portpin propose to pay the players the £8.4m out of the parachute payments in two years?

The Portpin four-year plan theoretically means Portpin putting money in, an alien concept I should think to the British Virgin Islands-based outfit, whose sole purpose, as stated often recently by Chainrai himself, is to get their money back.

The Trust’s bid says the players will get their £2m in next two years.

Unsurprised and undaunted by the Portpin late entry, the Trust put in their revised bid on Friday, the culmination of many months’ hard work, a bid backed by the fans, local MP’s, ex-players and the city council.

So it’s now a straight fight for ownership of Portsmouth Football Club between the Trust and Portpin, a whole community versus a remorseless money-making machine.

Trevor Birch of PKF has said his firm will look at both bids and decide which is best for all concerned, the club itself and the creditors. It’s a balancing act akin to King Solomon thinking about his pearls of wisdom while using a razor blade as a pubic hair nit comb.

The day after Portpin’s new bid there came new that there was a new third party interested in buying Pompey, a Mr Laurence Bassini. Watford fans were immediately all over the social media network like window-licking Jennifer Lopez stalkers warning Pompey fans about him, namely he had changed his name after being declared bankrupt, that he had sold the club to the Italian Pozzo family, lumbering them with huge debt that still has to be paid off.

Tales flowed of sacked staff, frozen bank accounts, our old friend Andrew Andronikou from our ex-admin crew UHY involved in the sale, all the familiar hallmarks of Pompey owners in recent years to be honest. I did check to see if he had changed his name from Azougy, Jacob, Gaydamak, Yossifoff, Al Faraj, Al Fahim etc but he was known as Lawrence Bazini previously.

The Pompey Trust acknowledged his interest and politely suggested that Bassini should submit a bid in his own right. In other words - go and do one.

If Portpin did succeed there would be the question of our beloved manager Michael Appleton, who was a tad miffed to say the least at Portpin’s late reduction in the player budget. Appy said Portpin had been “slightly unprofessional” in this matter, a massive understatement like saying Medusa often had a bad hair day.

Appleton said he would be happy to sit down with Portpin (who had slagged off Appleton in their hissy fit) if they took over and discuss what their plans were and, if he and Portpin were on the same wavelength, then he could foresee no problems but, if they weren’t, he would deal with that if that was the case.

As Appy is one of the club’s biggest assets at present, Portpin would be idiotic not to keep Appleton happy but there again, Portpin were the ones who lent money on three occasions to a non-existent Saudi so don’t be surprised if MA were to leave if Portpin took over.

Always wondered why Chainrai has never chased the actual bloke he supposed to have lent money to. £18m is not exactly loose change is it? Perhaps Balu is doing so as we speak, putting a whole new slant on the phrase “chasing his own tail”.

Talking of going round in circles I see Mr Chainrai has stepped in and saved the Liverpool Ferris Wheel from going out of business. Chainrai is no stranger to investing in the Ferris wheel industry in Asia and the Middle East and no doubt there will be a debenture issued to the new company Wheel Operations Ltd taking it over.

No doubt Cilla Black, Jimmy Tarbuck, Ken Dodd and Liverpool City Council all begged him to bid for it too.

Other News

The Football Supporters Federation’s National Fans' Survey 2012 results were released last week with more than 4,000 supporters from 130 different clubs completing the survey.

Not a lot of surprises to be honest, echoing the growing disillusionment with the game as a whole, emphasised since the Olympics ended.

Predictably, nine out of every 10 fans think ticket prices are too high, 73 per cent said season ticket prices are too expensive and 40% said that they had attended fewer matches in recent seasons.

Despite the weight of the above fan moans, many Premier League clubs have greedily raised season ticket prices yet again, further milking the loyalty teat of the fans. West Brom are the only team to have cut season ticket prices, down by 11 per cent, a sad indictment of the mindset that prevails in Premiership boardrooms.

Mind you, they do have to spend to keep up with the player demands.

Spiralling players’ wages have cut these young multi-millionaires off from reality and the bond that used to exist between players and fans has been cut in the main. That’s why so many Pompey fans are delighted with our fresh input of players who seem keen to play for the club, not just the pay packet, a refreshing change from the past decade.

I also have noticed the sheer sense of gleeful wonderment from the young generation of Pompey fans, who have known nothing but all-seater stadia, as they dance and jig about on the relative freedom of terracing.

Older fans like myself know the joy of being able to stand and watch a game with your mates, a feeling you just cannot reproduce in all-seater stadiums.

All-seaters are restrictive, the stewarding oppressive, your sense of freedom is muted, the sheer joy of watching your team tainted.

Just too many fans nowadays quickly cry “sit down” from behind you if you have the gall to stand up and watch a move unfold on the pitch. These type of fans want to watch and clap like it’s a cinema or a variety show at the theatre.

It’s not! This is football, our national game, the game which does still arouse the fiercest passion though it is slowly waining courtesy of the antiseptic modern stadiums, relentless club branding and Health and Safety-obsessed stewarding.

Football’s not a game where you can sit dumbly and politely applaud. You have got to get involved, to feel the flow of the game, to react to a shot, to share that moment when you score in unison with 15,000 other like-minded souls. Your natural reaction is to jump, shout, arms in the air, claim victory. That’s football, it’s a fans’ game.

In the survey 92 per cent think fans should have the choice to sit or stand. I strongly believe that all grounds should have that choice for fans. Those that want to sit, fine. Those that want to stand should be able to do so as well. Judging by the survey figures that’s an awful lot of fans!

But, despite the overwhelming evidence presented above of those most important people in football, the fans themselves, I fear the Football Authorities and the Government will politely note “with interest” the results of the survey. And do nothing. Again.

Football is losing its mojo, is dying without realising it, all for the sake of cash.

Malcolm Clarke, chair of the FSF, summed it up nicely for me:

“The game is playing Russian roulette when it comes to attracting younger fans who might start voting with their feet to become “pub only” fans, or even turn their backs on the game altogether,” he said.

Portus-Eg 29/8/12 all views expressed are mine.

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Appy's army

2012-08-21T02:02:00.000-07:00

Appleton’s Army On Its Way 21/8/12

Six days since my last blog.

God built the world in six days and had the seventh day off.

Wimp.

Michael Appleton, Pompey manager, matched his celestial counterpart’s exploits in the football world in the same period of time.

Appleton, who had signed up to execute a five year plan concocted by our previous wafer-thin owners CSI, has been nothing short of inspirational. Appy knew things were going tits up in typical Pompey style when CSI’s 5-year plan lasted all of ten days when Antonov had his collar felt, but he has remained stoically, gaining a legendary status amongst fans granted to few.

This status has grown immeasurably over the summer, especially in the last week or so.

From fielding a Paper Round X1 against Plymouth in the League Cup last Tuesday, Appleton somehow cobbled together in less than 48 hours a useful-looking senior side to face Bournemouth in our first league game last Saturday.

Most of them met for the first time in the dressing room before the Bournemouth game.

Less than 24 hours after Portpin’s monumental hissy fit and subsequent withdrawal of their bid for the club, Appleton swung into action.

The Wellington Training Ground at Eastleigh on Thursday looked like a promo film for the Job Centre as players literally queued up to sign on for both the club and Appleton.

Ten players were signed that day, with other loans following on Friday and Saturday morning before the game.

As mentioned previously in this blog, Portpin had slashed their player budget only days before the League start, torpedoing Appleton’s plans, causing him pain at a dick-stuck-in-the-zip level.

But Appleton is made of stern stuff. Working to the Pompey Trust’s proposed player budget (5^th lowest in League 1), Appleton shed 15 of his original 20 targets and remarkably still came up with the goods.

Most were signed on one-month contracts, a sobering sign that the club is still very much in peril.

Fratton Park on August 18^th 2012 became a new “I Was There” episode for Pompey fans as a new era opened with a near 18,000 crowd nicely filling the atmospheric old girl.

Thankfully the Pompey players had their names on their shirts, benefitting the crowd and, more than likely, the players too to identify them. Player cries of “Oi matey, over here” or “clear it mush” doesn’t help team continuity.

It didn’t take long to remember Mustapha Dumbuya’s name, so apt a name anyway but his marauding runs at right back had the crowd standing and roaring every time he got the ball.

Brian Howard, our new skipper, revelled in his central midfield general role and he ticked things over nicely while cajoling his team mates constantly. His midfield partner Williamson also looked useful and they both took it in turns to mop up loose balls and spread the play.

Luke Rodgers, who last season had partnered Thierry Henry in America, this time had the more humble Izale McLeod to partner him up front. That’s like driving a hired Rolls but getting back into your own Fiat Punto to go home.

It looked a promising partnership too, classic little and large combo. McLeod scored but should have had a hat-trick.

At the back it looked pretty good, considering they had only just met hours before. Andersen the keeper was agile, making a couple of very good saves while centre backs Long and Connolly got stuck in nicely after initial hesitancy.

Harley at left back was every inch the seasoned pro, solid and dependable. Reminded me a bit of Kenny Sansome, the old Arsenal full back in both stature and style of play. The makings of a good defensive unit there.

Lacking match fitness the Blues got knackered in the second half after dominating the first. All in all a draw was a fair result with the crowd giving it some real welly as they could see all the team playing for the shirt, a sight rarely seen in the past few years.

Off the field the situation remains Def Con 5.

Birch issued yet another deadline, this time to the Pompey Trust to get their final shit in their bid together by Friday 24^th August.

It appears the Trust have been doing just that and are, from what I hear, just about ready to go.

Fingers crossed.

The news that Pompey had managed to start signing players was greeted with widespread anger by the general football community.

The fact the players were on an one month contracts, football’s equivalent of a piece of gaffer tape stuck on a leaky exhaust, didn’t seem to register with the foam-mouthed critics, who quickly forgot their good wishes for the club survival and swopped them for epitaph-filled labelling of Pompey being cheats.

The fact we had to have a first team squad of 20 players to satisfy Football league rules didn’t seem to register either. Up to when we signed these one month players, we had three youngsters in the squad.

Incidentally, to stave off more accusations of spending beyond our means, the entire 20 man squad will be assembled for the same cost of Ben Haim’s wages (£36k a week).

News that our ten-point deduction was being deferred until we came out of admin further fuelled the vitriol.

One moment Fans United bonhomie, next we are are the scrapings off the bottom of their shoes.

Sad but that’s football for you. Never let facts get in the way of a good rant!

Also getting attention last week was local Pompey rag The News releasing an article dramatically saying the Trust’s £1.45 loan off the Portsmouth Council wasn’t secured against the Premier League parachute payments.

Seeing as that tidbit was known at the council meeting the week before, and seeing the vote was still unanimous, I guess the council still might be behind the Pompey Trusts bid. The loan is secured against Fratton Park anyway.

Another rumour being mooted over the weekend was the one where ex-geordie owner Freddy Shepherd was in a consortium with our ex-CEO Peter Storrie and our ex-manager Harry Redknapp to buy the club.

Heaven help us if it is true. Football ownership is full of modern day Vikings and we at Pompey have had our fair share. Letting these three loose on the club would be akin to appointing Saddam Hussein as welfare officer for the Kurds.

All in all its been a normal six days in the life of Portsmouth Football Club.

With Balram Chainrai out of the frame for now, the Pompey Trust’s bid is the only show in town. Since Chainrai bowed out there has been a marked increase in pledges to the trust, we have 14 more players on the books and had an 18k crowd. Coincidence I’m sure.

But it’s not done yet. Nowhere near it. Keep backing the Trust if you can, make the bid stronger.

With the players having whip rounds to pay for food, injured players unable to be scanned and training ground equipment being locked up the club needs the stability of definitive ownership to enable Appleton and his staff to do their jobs properly.

God knows Appy deserves it.

Other News

The Premier League got under way, under the microscope all the more following the true sports spectacle of the Olympics. PL chiefs have vainly tried to sell their product but the money keeps on hindering their efforts.

Van Persie went to Man Utd for £24m plus £200k a week for four years, £64m all told. They lost 1-0 at Everton. PL chiefs still wonder at why the criticism has occurred.

Gunners fan Piers Morgan threatened to top himself if RVP went north. Empty words as usual, just like when Piers Morgan said of one of our dubious owners Al Fahim was so minted that he had “platinum-plated eyeballs”. Mmm, of course he was loaded Piers. “Steel plated toecaps” more the case actually. I have a feeling that Piers is taken in by appearances, the type to mistake a dog turd wrapped in tinsel for a Christmas Log.

Our dear friends along the coast lost 3-2 at Man City. They poured onto every social network outlet known to man or horse proudly declaring they had only lost 3-2. I don’t think gloating about a loss after leading with 20 minutes to go is a hallmark of a winning mentality somehow and I feel they are in for a long hard season.

Portus- Eg 21/8/12 all views expressed are mine

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Pompey Near The End

2012-08-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

Trust close in as Portpin falter 15/8/12.

Chainrai withdraws his bid.

Those four magical words, those innocuous 23 letters of the English language has today brought a mixture of unbridled joy and utter despair hand-wringing in the bustling south east corner of Hampshire known as Portsmouth.

As a result, like trying to spot a grain of rice in a sackful of maggots, the solution to the Pompey takeover saga is getting clearer to see today as the long-winded negotiations draw to their drama-drenched conclusion.

As readers of this blog are aware I have been no fan of Balram Chainrai and his firm Portpin’s bid to become Pompey owners for a third “reluctant” time.

I had little doubts creep in last week that Portpin would succeed, stick around to milk a years’ worth of parachute payments before then “generously” taking the fan-based Pompey Trust’s £2.75m offer for Portpin’s debenture and disappear off into the corporate Bermuda Triangle of the British Virgin Islands, never to be seen or called to account again.

Thankfully my doubts were unfounded thanks to Portpin showing their true colours once again since my last blog.

As expected Chainrai started going back on his promises, this time even before he had taken over.

The wage budget of £4m, promised at the end of May to Pompey manager Michael Appleton, disappeared in a cloud of inevitability as Portpin declared, only a few days before our first competitive match at Plymouth last night, it was now down 60% at £1.5m.

Poor old stalwart trooper Appleton, already a fans’ hero for sticking around under impossible circumstances, had spent the summer lining up possible signings working to the promised £4m budget.

He now has had to bin his player wishlist and start all over again with our first league game three days away. The Scouts motto is “Be Prepared”, Pompey’s is more of a case of “Bring Your Own Boots”.

After that little gem Portpin then started haggling over admin outfit PKF’s £1.8m fees, though the numbers had been known about for months by both Portpin and the Pompey Trust.

Chainrai ranted that PKF should drop £200k straight away and defer £200k for a couple of years. As I have stated previously in my blog, Chainrai does like his deferrals.

The Trust had taken into account in their bid that PKF would get their fees out of the cash account at the club itself (thanks to a recent parachute payment) so why couldn’t Portpin do the same?

All part of the game.

Now this morning Chainrai has indignantly flounced off out of the bidding, spitting venomous blame bombs at all and sundry like a loose-bowelled pigeon flying over a nunnery’s washing line.

Having slagged off PKF for using the media to say things, Chainrai promptly released his statement to Sky Sports about his bid withdrawal, neglecting to tell PKF the same while he was at it.

Class.

He blamed the fans for showing little support for his bid: That’s like King Herod going for a crèche job and blaming the Old Bill for him failing a CRB check.

Chainrai had a right dig at PKF too, mocking their efforts to flog the club and the amount of their fees. Tad rich from the haughty Hong Kongite who apparently loaned money to a figment of his imagination on no less than three occasions.

He moaned too about the fact he didn’t want PKF appointed as admin in the first place, very true as his £500k teaser offered in the High Court in February to have Andrew Andronikou appointed didn’t work. How his heart must have sunk as the HMRC, backed by fellow creditor Portsmouth City Council, opposed Andronikou’s appointment and backed PKF.

He had a pop at the Football League too about the ten point deduction though I feel the FL’s condition about just how much (or little) debt the club can carry forward might have something to do with Chainrai’s ravings as he sees his debenture reducing in value like a Beirut timeshare.

Of course the fact PKF had allocated the parachute payments to pay off club debts obviously didn’t sit well with Chainrai who no doubt had other uses lined up for them.

Balu then scorned the Trust bid for lack of funds and labelled the Portsmouth City Council loan to the Trust as having “unrealistic” terms. Funny how Birch said they were pleased at the loan approval and that the Trust bid was now a “credible” option, especially more so with the loan conditions being met by Portpin’s withdrawal.

The parting shot from Chainrai in the statement was a broadside at Appleton for saying that “relegation was a certainty”. The fact that Appleton said this after seeing all his plans shot down in flames by Portpin’s late change in player budget three days before the first league game didn’t seem to register with Portpin as a relevant factor.

It’s not all over yet by any means. The Trust have to step up and show us their mettle. They still have to parlay with Portpin about paying off their debenture. An offer of £3m might do the trick though Portpin might go for a part lease part buy deal spread over a period of a few years.

Also they still have to sort out with Appleton what he needs player-wise to maybe have a half chance of surviving in this league.

Then there’s the question of Sacha’s land now up for grabs. A council Compulsory Purchase Order might do the trick but unlikely to happen. Would Portpin buy it and lease it to the club for a darn sight more than the £72k a year that the club pays now?

There are those fans who don’t reckon Birch and his team have done a good job.

I must say I think he has. If you think about it though he has got rid of all the high earners (like the Trust and Portpin wanted) and faced down Chainrai and his demands, making it clear the para payments were spoken for. Coincidence I’m sure that Portpin have walked away after finding that out.

Doesn’t mean I like or agree with the fees they are charging, it’s another case of jobs-for-the-Savile-Row-suits to me, but the amounts PKF charge are on a par with all the other admin crews. UHY, Andronikou’s mob, for example charged the club £300k for “pre-admin” work from November 2011 until February 2012. Anyone know what that work entailed? Did anyone ask them to do it?

A thousand and one obstacles still to go but not insurmountable ones. We have taken the next step to a fan-owned Pompey and I urge all Pompey fans to pledge or donate money to the Pompey Trust and help make history.

Olympics

Talking of urges, I had an uncontrollable urge to throw the telly out the window at the closing ceremony of the Olympics. The last hour, after what had been a fantastic 16 day adventure, was a cringefest of what someone deemed as being indicative of best of British music in the last 50 years.

I watched mainly in horror as a succession of great adverts for ear defenders assaulted our eardrums and performed in a variety of subliminal message ways apparently.

Is that so? I struggled to get my head around just what Annie Lennox was doing or representing to be honest.

My first thought was she was a plump Queen Boadicea in her boat telling the Vikings or whoever to fuck off or something. Apparently not, it was a tribute to writer Bram Stoker. Might have helped a tad if she sang a song I knew like “Sweet Dreams” as she still has a great voice. Instead we had some mournful dirge about a little bird. Bet that inspired a whole new generation of Olympic wannabes.

Ray Davis I’m afraid is understandably past his prime so I let him off, Kaiser Chiefs did a run-of-the-mill version of Pinball Wizard so okay there but what was Kitson’s brother doing annihilating Pink Floyd? Just like Kitson, well wide of the mark.

George Michael, looking every inch a seedy extra from Serpico, sleazed and cheesed his way through two songs, neither of which were memorable then we had three modern Brit music icons.

Some wannabe gangsta called Tiny Tots, a Barry White stand-in called Tia Maria or something and a songstress Jesse J, who later mullered the Queen classic “We Will Rock You” with a voice that sounded like she had mistaken a can of oven cleaner for a vaginal deodorant.

We also were “treated” to the Spice Girls who mimed their way through their act. They might as well stuck the mikes at their arses as they were more in tune with the songs than their mouths.

Boy band One Direction sang ok as did their genre forerunners Take That. Fair play to Gary Barlow, took a lot of guts to get up there and sing.

I was just reaching for The Samaritans number though when Eric Idle came on and did “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life”. Great stuff.

Cheered up by that, and having been made aware of my Annie Lennox blunder, I was less scathing of some scantily dressed bint sliding down a wire with fireworks going off behind her left ear. I knew it was a ballet thing, very artistic and all that and I pretended politely to know what the hell the dance bit was all about.

It finished though with The Who, class act. I liked the See Me Feel Me bit with the Paralympians on the big screen behind them.

But I was left wondering after the last hour what the rest of the world thought British people were like.

Would they think all our nuns rollerskated? Do they think every time we go for an Indian meal, are we all doused in curry powder? And after seeing the fashion salute bit, would they think British women had any breasts and did they all love wearing gold bacofoil?

Other Bits Of News

Other tittle-tattle before I go.

Nice to see Liam Lawrence gone. Our ex-captain, very fond of photogenic hamster-loving brunettes and of Glasgow Kissing SFC fans, was last to leave the sinking ship Pompey last Friday morning.

Having moved his homesick family back up to the Stoke area Liam has wrenched himself away from the South Coast – to join Greek outfit PAOS Salonika. I suppose that’s nearer to Stoke than Brisbane. Bon Voyage sir.

I was advised by a kindly Southampton fan (yep, they do exist) a few weeks back to peruse a thread about Pompey on a fansite called Saintsweb.

Out of morbid curiosity I did so. The thread is called Pompey Takeover Saga. It takes obsession to a whole new level, like boiling elephants in a swimming pool instead of rabbits in a saucepan.

Unbelievable. Its approaching 1500 pages and a hundred thousand posts spanning three years and its all about the goings on at their deadly rivals - Us. I lost the will to live after ten pages and haven’t bothered since.

Why would you want to post constantly for three years about another club? Is there not enough happening at their own club to be getting on with?

They are probably still at it as I type, beavering away feverishly on their keyboards, no doubt chewing up the latest Portpin refusal at the last fence and whether its four faults and a time penalty or not.

Sorry, even the mention of Southampton makes me think of horses. It’s no coincidence that the Horse and Hounds is the top dating mag in the SO postcode area.

They might want to consider instead the possibility that SFC’s parent company DMWSL 613 Ltd is probably going to dissolve in October.

They might want to consider what their ~~don~~ chairman Nicola Cortese will do then with the club.

Having been an employee of Swiss-based Mali International AG since last October, will he make the club a stand-alone entity in its own right?

Or will SFC become just be a bit part player in the Mali corporation, existing only as a convenient tax break?

Or will SFC just be there as an ATM for Mali to sub a few quid from the Sky payouts?

Who knows, it might all be a wind-up and I have got you right at it? But there again……

Portus – Eg all views expressed are mine 15/8/12

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Pompey Trust gets the city united

2012-08-09T11:12:00.003-07:00

Council Backs Pompey Trust's Bid 9/8/12

Today’s the day that the cuddly Asian teddy bear was supposed to have had his picnic, his cake and eat it too. Again.

But Portsmouth City Council’s unanimous decision this afternoon to loan the Pompey Supporters Trust £1.45m, vital to the Trust business plan cashflow, meant the champagne was put on ice for Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce’s finest rotundarian Balu Chainrai.

By PCC awarding the loan and effectively throwing their weight behind the Trust bid, suddenly both Trevor Birch of admin outfit PKF and Chainrai now realise the whole Portsmouth community is bidding to have the club in their care, a serious development which, for now, stops Chainrai from becoming for the third time the “reluctant” owner of Portsmouth FC.

If this shows Chainrai’s reluctant side what on earth is his eager side like?

In a tense council meeting, waves of Trust members and councillors extolled the virtues of having the club survive, reasons ranging from economic to pure pride, all eagerly lapped up by the Pompey fans packed into the public gallery.

A cheer worthy of a David Norris last minute equaliser went up when the vote for the loan was declared unanimously in favour.

The council, if the loan goes ahead, will have a charge against FP and should by any chance the Trust default, they will take possession on a prime chunk of redevelopment land in the heart of the city. Prime spot for new civic offices maybe? The very least they get will be their money back from the Trust plus a bit of profit.

It is far from a done deal for the Trust yet though but at least the fans are still in there fighting for their club.

The biggest sticking point for the Trust I fear, as I have pointed out recently, is the settlement deals with the players.

The total football player payoffs, if they were paid in full for what they were owed as per their contracts, was £8.4m.

Birch has reached compromise agreements with them but no-one knows how much for but he seems to have been doing the deals under Portpin’s settlement rates. Birch is duty bound to get the best deal for the creditors.

The Trust budget for those player settlements is £2m.

If Birch has settled all player claims for deferred wages only, and not for the rest of the players' contracts, then it could be a close-run thing for the Trust budget.

TBH's deferred wages up until now is past the £500k mark alone. It depends what the other player wages were.

Liam Lawrence deferring £14k a week, Dave Kitson £15k, I reckon that’s over a million quid just on those three, never mind the other eight players who already left. And that’s just on their deferred wages, not the full settlement of their contracts.

Of those other eight players Joel Ward, Stephen Henderson, Jason Pearce and Erik Huselklepp have heroically all probably sacrificing their money entirely.

But what of Aaron Mokoena? Hayden Mullins? Greg Halford is claiming deferred wages I believe? Kanu, as highlighted so often on this blog and in the media, is claiming and, if successful, could end the club in his own right.

A lot of hard negotiating still to come for the Trust to succeed but, by getting the council loan, the Trust has put the ball firmly back in Chainrai’s court. Portpin are still hot favourites to take over but the Trust outsiders are making a late run on the rail and are a credible fallback should Portpin not proceed with their bid. Will Portpin accept the £2.75m Trust offer to go away?

Chainrai will no doubt now say how he can’t let our famous old club die, that the fans are special and are the only reason for him breathing..etc etc blah blah blah but the truth, many Pompey fans feel, is far from that.

Mr Chainrai openly admits to knowing nothing about running a football club, a trait probably shared by 95% of club owners to be fair, but he does know how to make money by whatever means possible.

In my previous blog of 6/8/12 I told of what he would do if he took over. Pompey fans are used to the word “deferral”, Chainrai loves the word and practices its meaning often, especially when CVA and other creditor payments are due.

If Portpin do succeed then there probably would be many overdue red letter days ahead at Fratton Park offices and I reckon Chainrai would exit before any audited accounts are due to be published. Again.

Can we even believe the amount of debt we are in this time around anyway?

At the High Court in February 2012 the club, via club ex-CEO David Lampitt and ex-Finance Director John Redgate, claimed the £16.5m that Portsmouth City Football Club owed under the 2010 CVA should actually be around the £6m mark instead, a revelation that left the HMRC court team open-mouthed goldfish-style in disbelief. Lampitt and Redgate also wanted Andronikou appointed as admin, a ploy that failed.

John Redgate, David Lampitt and commercial director Nick Byrom were given the boot by PKF less than a week after the court hearing and all three have since put in claims under the Football Creditor rule. I will always wonder if those three would have kept their jobs if Andronikou had been appointed admin? A fair bet would be yes I reckon, seeing as Andronikou appointed them in the first place.

Nothing has been heard about that revelation since but, if what the club claimed in court was true, then the £83m unsecured creditor debt (reduced to £16.5m in the 20p in £ 2010 CVA) was in fact only (sic) £30m back then.

Who came up with the original estimation of the club debt in 2010 then? Who was admin? Andrew Andronikou. Makes you wonder if the copious CVA documents produced during the 2010 admin were worth the paper they were written on.

The now notorious ex Pompey player Tal Ben Haim, having been not so much a stumbling block to both bidding parties but more of an eight-lane motorway pile-up, suddenly now has succumbed to an unheard-of bout of common sense and has meekly walked away with a settlement deal. That’s like Artrhur Scargill declaring he delivered coal to Maggie Thatcher’s house throughout the miners’ strike.

Ben Haim’s sudden surrender contrasts starkly to our first admin in 2010.

In July 2010, Pompey were in admin first time around due to a crippling supposed debt of £137m. We had just been relegated from the Premier League and we were shipping players out as fast as we could to cut down the costs, a familiar scenario!

Ben Haim, then 28 and at the peak of his club and international career, had a chance to activate the relegation clause in his contract which would free him to continue playing at the highest level he could, either in the Premier or its equivalent overseas.

Ben Haim however refused to activate the clause despite Andronikou’s inept pleas, instead he chose to stay on his full £36,000 a week at a championship club in a lower league who had, at the time he refused, only EIGHT players and were the bookies favourites for relegation.

Why on earth would he want to stay? To further his career? What was his motivation I wonder? As I have stated previously in my blog Ben Haim’s contract is legal and he is entitled to the money but morally?

The Israeli defender was linked with a move to West Ham in August 2010 but the Hammers sensibly refused to meet TBH’s wage demands so a loan deal was arranged. When the loan deal finished in January 2011 TBH came back to Pompey but Chainrai refused to pay him his wages so TBH didn’t play for the rest of the season.

The ill-fated CSI took over Pompey in June 2011 and paid TBH most of his £1.4m unpaid wages in July 2011. Since then Ben Haim has played on his full whack until PKF in February 2012 cut his wages to a meagre £5k a week and deferred the balance as they did with all the players.

As well as the club itself and the ordinary workers’ jobs there, TBH held to ransom the future monies of his fellow ex-team mates as well as his own. Not many Christmas cards coming TBH’s way I suspect.

He got himself into this "Public Enemy Number One" situation by his greed and perhaps not helped by the fact Andrew Andronikou, our admin from 2010 and friend to Chainrai, has been advising him lately.

I had no sympathy or felt any empathy with Tal Ben Haim at all. Goodbye to money-grabbing bad rubbish as far as I am concerned.

The behaviour and brinkmanship displayed during this admin has been nothing short of abysmal, with the warring footballing parties forgetting there were ordinary people working at the club hanging on every word in the hope that their jobs were safe, that they could pay the bills or keep their houses.

Also avidly soaking in every development hoping for a fresh start were the Pompey fans, sickened by years of appalling mismanagement at the club which had reduced our once-great footballing institution to a lurching, furtive joke parody of its former self and having helplessly seen the main perpetrators of the club’s decline slink off scot free.

Hundreds of millions of pounds went through the club in the last decade or so, much of it in a period which has no public independent accountability records. If PFC were a government organisation or a bank, there would have been an in-depth public inquiry carried out long before now.

Lip service was paid in the media by all parties involved, from admin to players alike, to the fans but the damage they have caused in the Pompey fans’ psyche will take many years to repair, if at all.

For instance we had TBH/Andronikou blaming PKF fees for PFC's possible demise, even though PKF were appointed by the court and don't have PFC contracts.

Birch publicly held up Tal Ben Haim as the example of past Pompey excesses, Kanu then waded into PKF and said they should drop their fees. Pini Zahavi stuck his nose in as did Harry Redknapp and so on.

Portpin had a go at PKF, no doubt still miffed their preferred admin Andronikou was booted out by the High Court judge in February despite a £500k teaser to entice the judge to appoint Andronikou.

A battle ensued between PKF and Andronikou’s mob UHY over retained monies, an appeal against the PKF appointment lost by UHY, the list of public claims and counterclaims goes on but they all forgot the one thing that mattered – Portsmouth Football Club.

As Gordon Gekko would say, ”it’s all about the money”. In football today, no truer words.

Compare today’s breed of footballers with their arrogance, theatrics, mediocre skills and awash with cash to the Olympic athletes of all nations whose unbridled joy at winning or competing was uplifting to say the least.

I watched the women’s football and the way they flung themselves into every tackle, took the knocks (some heavy, Canadian girl in semi-final extra time against USA comes to mind), got up and got on with it. No stretcher-laden mortally wounded “sniper-got-me” theatrics, no backchat, snarling or swearing at refs, just good old-fashioned football. Great stuff!

Would rather watch that than any Premiership poncefest anyday and I hope Pompey play the same honest way this season. At least in League One it’s definitely not all about the money for the players!

I watched the Olympics with a smile on my face and will do the same with the Para Olympics. These people have such hunger to win, they have trained relentlessly for this moment in their lives, they love what they do and show it, we all can identify with them. Money doesn’t even come into their thinking. Brilliant! How sport should be and how football used to be.

Portus-Eg 9/8/12 all views expressed are mine

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Pompey on a promise

2012-08-06T04:48:00.000-07:00

Promises Promises 6/8/12

Rumours.

No, not the legendary Fleetwood Mac album, I’m talking about football rumours.

Notorious for its inaccuracy, football gossip is equivalent for the most part to a “Michael Fish-No hurricane” weather forecast with the rest made up by picking random names out of a hat.

One of the latest Pompey rumours, wind assisted by desperation, is that Portpin have won the battle against the Pompey Trust to take over the club. Normally, I would take such a rumour and file it in my “Andy Murray seen kissing an England badge” folder but this latest Portpin rumour, sadly I fear, is probably correct.

Regular readers of my blog ( hiya you two!) will have noted I am a supporter of the Trust bid and that also I couldn’t see why on earth Portpin (previous owner Balram Chainrai’s company) would want to take over anyway. I forecasted he would take the money offered by the trust (£2.75m) and run for the hills.

But little doubts have started to rise in my mind since my last blog after Chainrai said in an interview he was willing to take over for a little while then let the Trust take over.

Seeing as up to now Chainrai hadn’t acknowledged the Trust’s existence, the very fact he uttered their name in a semi-congenial manner sent waves of dread through me, a feeling akin to finding out your vegetarian next-door neighbour’s real name is Hannibal Lector.

Couple to that the news that Dave Kitson had suddenly agreed to a compromise deal and buggered off into retirement (or maintains his status quo as per last two years) plus fellow player Tal Ben Haim saying he would have news tomorrow on his settlement terms has me reaching for the panic button.

Shifting Ben Haim up until now had been like trying to capsize the Ark Royal with a dishcloth so his sudden swing in attitude is more alarming than George W Bush taking over the Peace Corps.

It has been said Chainrai’s old friend Andrew Andronikou, of deposed PFC admin crew UHY, has been advising Ben Haim. That’s like getting Bernie Madoff to sort out your pension plan and Al Capone to fill in your tax return.

The hub of this latest rumour says Chainrai has offered to pay players £8.5m over four years, dwarfing the Trusts’ offer of £2m over two years. As I said in my last blog I knew Portpin had offered more to the players but not by that much. It seems that Trevor Birch of admin crew PKF is favouring Portpin’s bid as a result.

So, Chainrai looks like he will get the club because he promised to pay the players more. But what about the forgotten unsecured creditors in the CVA then, don't those creditors matter?

Chainrai has offered them 2p in £, The Trust 3.4p paid up in a year. But it seems the woeful plight of the good old Football Creditors will win the day for Portpin.

We all know how trustworthy Chainrai's promises are. He would offer to pay for your gas bill knowing you lived in an all-electric flat. He never coughed up at all for the last CVA, including paying off the small creditor. He instead deferred the CVA payments until after CSI took over. All the CVA creditors from the 2010 admin lost their money.

What’s to stop Chainrai doing the same thing again? More chance of Cliff Richard fronting the Chippendales than the players seeing much of their promised money I reckon.

Some Pompey fans believe if Chainrai took over he will stay until all the parachute payments are received in two years’ time. I did think that at first but I don’t think he will. I reckon he will stay on until next April/May and pocket the £5m odd para payments the club will get in that time.

Meanwhile he will defer creditor repayments, including the player payoffs, like he did last time.

Then, having milked the lavish praise for “saving” the club again, Chainrai will then generously announce he will take the Trust offer of £2.75m for his debenture and invite them, as he said publicly he would do, to take the club on.

Trouble is, The Trust by then will not be in a position to take the club on unless they find a new wealthy fan or two. Given the time and tremendous effort it has taken the Trust to get to its present financial standing, I cannot see them in effect doubling their money resources to buy the club off Chainrai and run it as they and the fans would like.

The Trust current takeover plan is based on using the remaining £11.6m parachute payments in their entirety. If Chainrai does wait to hand over until half the PP’s have gone, The Trust’s plan is truly knackered. The Trust can’t afford the player payoff deals that have been agreed by Birch now, never mind when half the para payments have gone.

The Trust will then be perceived as the bad guys and the ones who let the club die if Chainrai lets the club go belly up, having pocketed £5m PP money plus whatever he can scrounge in the liquidation.

Therefore, unless Portpin could find another mug to buy the club, we would be back where we are are today.

If by some miracle Chainrai does find another buyer, he will include in the selling price his current debenture, now worth around £2.8m, and add a new debenture that he will make out for any money (if at all) he uses for the time he is in charge of the club this time around.

The new buyer would then put a charge against the club for the amount he or she has shelled out to buy it and run it (with a profit margin of course). And off Pompey would go again on the road to yet another ruin.

Another rumour doing the rounds is Liam Lawrence staying on for four years on a much reduced rate of pay and becoming a coach. Under the Trust bid I reckon that would be untenable but under Portpin and their promises?

Of course this is all rumour and conjecture………

Portus_Eg 6/8/12 all views expressed are mine

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Pompey Trust show their hand

2012-08-02T17:44:00.000-07:00

Temperature Rises As Do The Stakes 3/8/12

Pompey fans booing one of their own in a blue shirt?

The unthinkable happened at the EBB stadium in Aldershot on Wednesday 1^st August 2012.

As the recipient was Tal Ben Haim though, those puzzled by this unheard-of dissent will nod and gasp “Aaaaah, I see”, the explanation being “It’s Ben Haim, no wonder”.

Tal Ben Haim, about as popular as someone using the Turin Shroud to put out a chip pan fire, has become the symbolic figurehead for football greed in general, a trait which has led Pompey to their imminent demise. Even the Aldershot fans joined in the condemnation of Ben Haim. Unfair on him to be fair, but his stance to hold out for as much as he can get puts the 114 year-old club in real jeopardy.

Fans have seen players like Huselklepp leave, waiving his rights to any money he is owed by the club. Other players like Mullins, Halford, Varney and Norris along with others also took a big hit in their fiscal regions for the sake of the club’s survival, asking only for their deferred wages to be paid back over a period of time and waiving the money owed on the rest of their contracts.

That lot adds up to a fair old eye-watering cash write-off by those players and angry fans say: “If these blokes can do that much to save the club, why can’t Ben Haim?”

To be fair to the 30-year old Israeli defender, he isn’t the only one holding out for the money. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, Dave Kitson and Liam Lawrence are still hanging around like burnt chili in a saucepan wanting their pound(s) of flesh too. Lawrence surprisingly didn’t get any stick in the Aldershot game but I cannot see that situation lasting long.

Don’t forget Kanu and his £3m claim. Although he has now left the club, his claim could still end the club if the Football League tribunal decides in the Nigerians’ favour. Strange how Harry Redknapp appeared briefly last week in a blaze of headlines to say he would talk to Kanu yet we have heard nothing since. Could it be Harry knew Kanu was leaving anyway in a few days? Harry milking the media? Never!

The pressure on everyone cranked up a notch yesterday with the Pompey Supporters Trust releasing details of their bid.

To me it’s a fair bid and one that will put the club firmly back on the road to recovery and respectability.

Firstly the Trust has made an offer of £2.75million to Balram Chainrai for his debenture on Fratton Park. It’s about what I expected and all Chainrai can seriously hope to get back.

From my blog 13/7/12:

“Thanks to the Football league saying on that day (12/7/12) that only a limited amount of secured debt (debentures) can be passed onto the next PFC company, Chainrai can now only get a % of his £18.6m back (I’m guessing the FL stipulation will be around 15%, or £2.8m, the approximate current commercial value of Fratton Park).

If Chainrai wanted to take the club on he would have done so by now. Taking the club on means him putting money in with little chance of recouping it thanks to the Football League stipulations on how the club should be run. Chainrai putting money in therefore would be akin to buying Antartica because you fancied a few ice cubes in your Magners and I cannot see Chainrai sticking around to do that.

Also in the proposals is the fact all football clubs owed money by Pompey will be paid in full, so long as it does not exceed £1.75million. No doubt loads of exasperated club owners around the country will welcome that juicy tidbit.

In amongst the other proposals is the one where a number of non-playing staff will also be paid off up to the amount of £330k. The latter throws up a wave of nausea as I think that includes brass-knecked ex-CEO David Lampitt who has filed a sickening claim for £250k under the Football Creditor rule, a true hypocrite as he now heads Supporters Direct who are publicly opposed to the FC rule.

The Trust has also offered a pool of £2m to be shared out amongst the players. This is a fair bit less than what Portpin are offering the players but still offers a far greater return than the club’s ordinary creditors will get.

For, in the Trust’s CVA proposal, there is a creditor dividend for 3.4p in the £ as opposed to Portpin’s 2p in the £. Also better for creditors is that they get £500k shared amongst them within 60 days from when the Trust takeover plus the other £350k within a year as opposed to Portpin 4-year plan.

I remember the last CVA proposed by Chainrai. The payments were deferred and deferred until after CSI took over and look what happened there! Chainrai never coughed up a penny in the end and all the creditors lost their cash.

Player wages are a breath of fresh air too in the Trust proposals. The squad’s wage bill, including tax and performance-related pay must not exceed £2.65million - Ben Haim’s wages for a year including image rights.

I reckon for a 20-man squad that’s about £2000 a week including NI and tax, the 650k would be optimistically earmarked I reckon for win bonuses. This is very much in line with the division we are in and shows the level-headed thinking that has gone into this bid. Some fans will bemoan this figure as unambitious but look where paying more than we can afford to has got us. The wage bill for non-playing staff too will be reduced to £1.1million in total, making a total staff wage bill of £3.75m.

The Trust bid is based on an average attendance of 11,500, with season ticket sales making up 7,500 of this total. Realistic figure, with 7,000 season tickets already sold as of the end of July.

Some fag packet maths to get on with. Like most people I haven’t seen the Trust business plan but their figures released yesterday lends me to take a fairly wild stab at their general idea.

Let’s say then, 4,000 on-the-day punters at £20 a pop is £80k x 23 games a season = £1.84m. 7,500 season tickets at an average of £13 a game is £2.24m + £1.84m = £4.08m.

Of course the figures are not quite that clear-cut as Junior and OAP ST prices have to be accounted for but I am guessing the Trust has reckoned that the 11,500 will take near enough take care of the total staff bill (tax paid) of £3.75m for the year.

I would assume the £11million of parachute payments over the next two years are earmarked for creditors and the like, leaving approximately £800k a season TV money and whatever sponsorship, merchandising and corporate cash that can be raised to be pigeonholed to fund the club’s day-to-day bills.

Using the PKF figures in their May2012 Statement of Club Affairs ( a six-week rundown of the daily bills, applied pro rata to a year) as a rough guide I would estimate the club’s day to day running costs (excluding staff wages) at about £118k a month, or £1.4m a year. Add that to the £3.75m staff wage bill makes it £5.15m a year.

It will be tight and certainly means no chance of any marquee signings – more a case of a one-man tent in a ditch I reckon - but it is clear the Trust has a credible plan to run the club and pay off the creditors within a two-year period if I have read their proposals correctly.

There are questions about the Trust bid for sure but I am puzzled at some of the scathing doubts voiced by some Pompey fans about the Trust’s funding yet none about Chainrai’s funding capabilities, a man who has broken every promise made regarding PFC yet people still would rather he took over the club than the Trust. Strange.

To date the Trust have raised a superb £3million from fan pledges alone, plus a significant amount from other sources including £750k from the Associate Director and “significant” six-figure sums from four High Net Worth Pompey fans.

As the Trust have not had the fan pledges fully realised into cash yet, they have put in a proposal to the Portsmouth City Council for a bridging loan of £1.45m, again to be repaid within a year like the CVA, to help them pay off Chainrai’s debenture on the stadium.

Would-be club chairman nominated by the Trust is 61 year-old local businessman and self-made millionaire Iain McInnes, a lifelong Pompey fan brought up in a Paulsgrove prefab, a tough environment which instils the true value of money and a lot of common sense.

Like everyone involved with the Trust bid, he is a Pompey fan and wants what is best for the club’s future and for football in general. He hinted at repairing the club’s relationship with the fans.

“I think everyone will admit that what we have seen over the past few years just isn't Pompey – yes, nobody said not to spend all that money and win an FA Cup, but that's not us.

“We need to bring this football club back into the real world, and I think a lot of other clubs will use us as a blue print if the Trust is successful.” he said after the bid’s launch.

“I think it is the best bid in town and the right bid for the community. Portpin are offering a better deal for the football creditors, but we certainly have the best bid for the future.”

I make no bones about being a supporter of the Trust bid. To me, if their bid was successful it would start to bring the club back in touch with their supporters who have been ostracised over the past decade or more by a succession of selfish decisions by PFC management regarding club policy, marketing, ticket price increases coupled with a general complacency about what Pompey fans will accept, that they will turn up regardless and pay for.

That attitude has to stop. I think it will if the Trust succeed. After all, they are all fans and victims of those decisions themselves and have watched helplessly in the past like the rest of us as various Pompey owners and their acolytes plundered the family jewels until only the empty cabinet was left.

The Trust has had many critics, and still do judging from the various media forums I have seen since the bid launch, but they have all stuck to their tasks superbly and produced a viable bid that will keep Portsmouth Football Club alive and bring it back into where it belongs, into the safe keeping of its most protective guardians, the fans themselves.

All this can happen but will not if the remaining players do not play ball or Birch decides the offer isn’t going to work.

The Trust has showed its hand now, nothing else to do now but to wait and see if it's the winning one.

EDIT 3/8/12 at 09.15

Just downloaded the Trust proposals from their website. My fag packet maths above was a bit awry but not too bad as it happens. Below is a summary of what the Trust sees as the club's projected cash flows for next three seasons:

Season 1 Season 2 Season 3

2012/13 2013/14 2014/15

(11mnths)

TOTAL INCOME 10,202,304 11,042,892 6,337,353

TOTAL EXPEND (11,996,673) (6,591,772) (6,074,094)

PROFIT /(LOSS) (1,794,369) 4,451,120 263,259

Loan interest (52,833) (4,833) 0

(LOSS) inc INTEREST (1,847,202) 4,446,287 263,259

CASH B/FWD 0 145,631 2,739,084

CASH C/FWD 145,631 2,739,084 2,326,581

Saddest part for me in the proposals is the Trust projecting in season 2014/5 that the clubs' Academy will be deemed as too expensive to run. I hope that sponsors can be found to fund the academy as it will be vital to our future.

Go to the Trust website and download the their proposals

http://www.pompeytrust.com/index.php?option=com_rokdownloads&view=folder&Itemid=109&id=85:bid-documents

Portus-Eg 3/8/12 all views expressed are mine.

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Pompey, 12 to go

2012-07-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

29/7/12 Pompey countdown

On the 12^th day from liquidation my true love said to me…

Four squad players, three liquidators, two warring bidders and a portly Asian loan shark still running free.

It is Sunday the 29^th July and the Pompey saga lurches painfully into the home straight like a trick cyclist who suddenly remembered he left his saddle at home.

The numbers of the remaining senior squad players at the club, whose departures are vital to the clubs’ survival, has been whittled down to four with David Norris joining the new Pompey clan at Leeds while Erik Huselklepp will no longer be pining for the fjords as he heads back to his native Brann. Greg Halford has joined the iconic Sean O’Driscoll’s revolution at Forest.

Three of them highlighted in my last blog are still there as expected, namely chiropractor dream ticket Nwankwo ”author of an idiots guide to imbecility” Kanu, Tal Ben “Gekko is a pussy” Haim and Dave “I thought the nets were there to hold the goalposts up” Kitson plus a fourth player sneaking in on the infamy list, Liam “my legs were made for shaving” Lawrence.

Unsurprisingly, three of them are the highest wage earners with Kanu the highest claimant.

A stalemate now ensues, the gaggle of player agents and PKF admin men, Birch, Gould and Jackson , circling each other like wary lepers, unsure whether either side will come away empty handed after shaking on a deal.

On a totally different and obscure subject I noticed at the end of last week the vicious Twitter spat between ex Pompey favourite Jamie O’Hara and ex-Chelsea player Leon Knight. The diminutive duo, who both would struggle even wearing stilts to nut Peter Crouch in the balls, flew at each other after Knight accused O’Hara’s wife of being a hoe.

Being in my mid-fifties I wondered why calling someone a worm-killing garden implement would cause such offence but, after studying the twitter exchange comments, it is apparently an American gangsta term for a woman who is, how shall we say, “liberal” with her sexual favours.

I know back in the day if a bloke was called a “rake” he too was reputed to have an eye, and more, for the ladies but I didn’t know countryside jargon was a full-on code for todays’ youth though and this Twitter incident has forged in me a new respect for the 1970’s pop legends The Wurzels, who it seems were way ahead of their time.

“I’ve got a brand new combine harvester and I’ll give ee the key “ gangsta code for “you wanna come for a ride in my new high rollin’ Beamer?”

“I’ve got 20 acres, you’ve got 43 “.gangsta bloke saying he is well-endowed and compliments the woman on her cleavage.

So, the next time you hear a farmer say that his milk quota has been slashed, it probably means customs have busted his latest drug drop.

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Portsmouth playing lets twist again

2012-07-25T18:02:00.001-07:00

Lets Twist Again!

It’s all been kicking off since my blog four days ago.

August 10^th 2012 will be the last time the doors of Fratton Park will remain open in 114 years. Actually, seeing as it’s a Friday, the doors will be shut as usual but it’s my dramatic emphasis poetical licence moment in this little narrative.

As everyone knows Trevor Birch, our well-paid silver haired Yoda clone from admin crew PKF, announced to the waiting world this week the date, the final countdown if you will, of Pompey’s liquidation if the remaining senior players do not compromise on what they are owed. (see my last blog of 22/7/12 for my views on their stance).

Tal Ben “If I was a richer man” Haim has become to many fans the most hated greedy selfish bastard since the last bank chief awarded himself a bonus while “Club Killer” Kanu has closely followed him in the unpopularity stakes with the prolific ginger-haired striker Dave” A goal every 12 games” Kitson back in a gallant third place, though to be fair it is hard to tell if he is more unpopular amongst some Pompey fans now than he was before this present situation arose.

Ben Haim leapt (Ok, meandered then) to his own defence on Sky, mumbling beneath his science- defying monobrow that he was owed £2.5m in backpay cash and that if he was being asked to drop some dough then Birch should too, seeing as he paid the same money.

As Ben Haim is on £55k a week including image rights that would mean Birch, on his £315 a hour, would have to put in a 174 hour week to match him, an amazing feat considering there are 168 hours in a week. Obviously Ben Haim went on the same accountancy course as ex-club CEO Peter “If it’s raining on a matchday I get a bonus” Storrie.

Both Portpin and the Pompey Supporters Trust bids are conditional that all the senior players have got to go via compromise agreements. From what Birch said on Meridian TV last night Portpin have offered the slightly higher compromise deal to the players but the fact Portpin have said they will pay the players back over a four year period has probably taken the shine off their higher payoff rate. Plus Chainrai’s unenviable track record of keeping to promises probably has the players running for the white heather, nearest vat of salt and a fleeing bunch of four-legged rabbits.

The Pompey Trust have always said they would pay the players off via the Para payments over the next two years they last and have offered to meet the players, presumably macheteless, to reasonably discuss matters.

The signs are that most players will comply, some already have, leaving probably just the three mentioned players above to shift, a task it seems from Birch’s demeanour to be akin to dental flossing a tankful of piranha fish.

Ben Haim apparently has told his notorious agent Pini Zahavi to keep out of the ongoing negotiations with Birch. That’s like telling Moses to piss off and put back the Red Sea where he found it. The sigh of huge relief amongst Pompey fans soon dissipated though with the news that our old mate Andrew Andronikou of rival admin outfit UHY, our previous admin from 2010 and initially in 2011 and favoured choice of Portpin’s Balram Chainrai, was rumoured to be advising Ben Haim instead.

Given that Andronikou was unceremoniously dumped off the PFC admin job in February 2012 by the High Court, relations between PKF and UHY have been a tad strained, with claims and counter claims being bandied about like a battered shuttlecock between the two companies.

I, for one, find it strange that Andronikou could be Ben Haim’s adviser in the first place. One, he isn’t a registered football agent, not a deterrent in itself but favoured by the football authorities.

Two, the fact that Andronikou is the admin for CSI. Seeing as technically PFC is still an asset for CSI, then surely advising somebody to potentially put PFC out of business would be detrimental to the CSI creditors interests. CSI have nine subsidiaries, all in admin, most have creditors. I am not convinced he is officially Ben Haim’s adviser but he could be having a quiet word in his ear though.

No wonder Birch looks knackered all the time.

As for Kanu, safely ensconced in his Nigerian hometown of Owerri and no doubt nursing a depleted wallet following building his second hotel and having shelled out £12m on luxury properties in the past year, he will languidly await the phone call from a certain Harry Redknapp.

‘Arry has decided magnanimously, and uninvited, on Pompey’s behalf to have a word with Kanu about his £3m claim from the club.

I thought at first Kanu was going for his image rights for the past three years, hence the increased claim from £300k to £3m but apparently Kanu, who signed a deal in 2010 admin where he was paid a years’ wage spread over three years, is now claiming he should be paid the year-long rate of pay over the full three years.

Tad naughty of him, especially considering the deal had been ratified by the Football League and the fact he has played just 80 games for us since the cup final in 2008, half of them as sub. One for the courts I reckon.

So now our ex-manager has stuck his oar into the fiasco. Harry to this day divides opinion amongst Pompey fans. Undoubtedly he was the best manager we have had in a long time and he took us to playing heights we could never had imagined but it was at a cost, a cost we are still reeling from today.

The news he was back on the scene and was going to speak to Kanu brought a groan to my lips. No doubt we will now end up with five Nigerian players of unascertainable age at the club, a two week holiday raffle prize at one of Kanu’s hotels and a dead cert for the 4.30 at Doncaster tomorrow.

Kitson, who apparently this week mistook at the training ground a group of Pompey fans festooned in club colours and banners for the paparazzi, has stated via his agent there is no compromise to be made and he wants his full wack. Unhelpful to say the least.

There you have it, in general terms at least. No doubt it will have all changed by this time tomorrow. As I said in my last blog, the players are blameless for this situation and are legally entitled to the dosh but things have changed drastically since their contracts were signed. If we are liquidated the players will get nothing, a fact verified by Gordon Taylor of the PFA and both Birch and joint admin Brian Jackson of PKF this week.

As each day goes by and the liquidation gets nearer, the fans’ unease and, for the most part, understanding of the players stance, will dissipate into outrage at their perceived greed. I hope the players see sense and go, for their sakes as well as those of the fans and the club.

Portus Eg 26/7/12. All opinions stated are mine

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pompey players pay stance

2012-07-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Portus-Eg's blog ; Stardate : 22.07.12

There is a line from the Star Trek series where Scotty says to Jim Kirk: “There’s Klingons on our starboard bow Jim”, a line immortalised later in the Startrekkin song by The Firm. Well, Pompey have their very own bunch of ‘cling-ons’ and, like their alien brethren in a familiar unlikely plot from the TV series, they aren’t shifting off our starboard bow, instead they are using their cloaking devices to try and get a pot of cash that doesn’t exist.

Eight senior players, left behind from the training camp in Spain so they could fix up a new club, have instead dug their heels in and are insisting they get paid what they are due from their contracts in cash…now. Birch the club’s current admin has offered them to be paid off in instalments by way of a compromise agreement.

The sum of their claims runs into many millions, too much for the potless club or the two potential buyers to ever find right now. It’s a Mexican, or should I say an Alpha Centaurian, standoff with the future of Portsmouth Football Club at stake.

The time approaches fast where Pompey will die, make no mistake. There are sadly so many Pompey fans saying “Don’t worry, someone will come in at the last minute and save us”. I can understand this point of view, football is littered with clubs earning last-minute reprieves.

But this present situation is unique, hopeless and ultimately soulless. What we have is two wannabe ‘last-minute heroes’, so to speak, being fatally delayed in their quest to resurrect Portsmouth Football Club.

One with a bid already in is Chainrai, in the shape of Portpin. The other bidders waiting to pounce are the Pompey Supporters Trust. One is entrenched in the mysterious grey region of the British Virgin Islands, the land where unaccountable offshore companies frequently go to die without a trace, the other is a company whose headquarters is 200 yards from the stadium and whose board members can be found every home game in the ground, mainly in the home fans’ bastion of the Fratton End. No guessing who I’d prefer to be the new PFC owners but that’s not the point of this narrative.

Alas, neither bidder will succeed if the remaining eight senior squad players do not drop their demands of wanting a cash lump sum now in lieu of what is left on their contracts. Both bids are conditional that they all leave and that they all reach a compromise agreement on the rest of their contracts, to be paid in instalments over the next few years.

Some fans stick up for the players, citing the “what would you do in the same situation?“ and “they are legally entitled to what their contracts states” scenarios.

Trouble is, I don’t earn £20k plus a week so how would I, or any other Pompey fan truth be known, know what I would do in their situation?

I would like to think, if I was one of these players, I would get a balanced perspective on what consequences my actions could set off if I asked the current crop of what is left of the backroom staff at Fratton and ask them would they prefer a deferral of their wages and be paid the rest over the next few years instead of the redundancy (probably without a payoff to go with it) that will happen if things do not change?

I would like to think I was aware of just what the football club meant to the fans and to the city, not just in terms of economy input but more in terms of being the fuel that feeds the very fabric and soul of the city’s identity, a pride and passion in our historic island city which burns constantly within.

The players cannot be made redundant under present Football League rules. Backroom staff can, have been and will be. They have mortgages too and bills to pay. Ask them if they can survive on the presently capped £5k a week the players are getting. What’s more, most of these backroom staff love the club as they are fans themselves and have suffered far more financial hardship than the players.

They too probably thought they had jobs for life at Portsmouth Football Club.

Circumstances financially at the club have drastically changed since the players’ lucrative contracts were awarded. These players seem unwilling to make allowances for that factor and seem oblivious to the plight of the backroom staff and of the creditors, who must be mightily peed off with the players’ stance. The creditors after all are willing to forego 98% of their “wages” by voting in the proposed CVA in order to save the club, the 2010 CVA creditors have lost the lot.

What I cannot understand about the players’ intransigence is, if the club liquidates, the players get nothing. The parachute payments, earmarked by both bidding companies (only one of them meaning it I reckon but that is for another time!) to pay off these footballers over a period of time as well as the CVA, will be rescinded by the Premier League and go straight back into the PL coffers to be then divvied up amongst the PL clubs.

A sickening though minor thought in itself as our dear equine-fancying trophyless neighbours from the dark side of Hampshire will not only financially benefit from our demise but also they would become for the first time Hampshire’s Number One team, albeit only by default until we could hopefully start up a new team.

Surely the players know, by the very fact most of their wages have been deferred for a few months, that there is no magically appearing pot of cash available in the club to satisfy their cash-now-only demands?

Do they seriously think that Chainrai, having just seen a probable 85% wiped off his £18.6m debenture pay-out by the Football League, will put his hand in his pocket and pay them off with millions in cash?

It’s highly unlikely Chainrai would have put anything in anyhow but if he had, it would have been in the knowledge he could add that amount to his debenture “tab”. Plus interest! As things stand now, he can’t do that as he wouldn’t get it back so he won’t put the money in.

The Pompey Trust, bless them, just won’t have the cash available either to pay the players off in one go. Simple.

Obviously the players are not to blame for the utterly dismal financial state of the club but they will be to blame if their lust for ready cash lets the club die. In my opinion they should take the offer of being paid back in instalments and be thankful they will be getting a lot more than the creditors. To my mind none of the players have played anywhere near to the ability of what their wage packets indicated. We wouldn’t have been relegated if they had.

I do wonder if the players are listening to what their agents are advising? If they are then I would advise them to think again.

Pompey player Kanu’s agent Samuel Okoronkwo, no stranger to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal by the way, is saying his client is owed millions. Birch says there is no case for that. Couldn’t find any trace of Kanu being owed in any of the many bulky admin documents from 2010 or 2012. Be interesting to see what happens there.

Then there’s Pinhas ‘Pini’ Zahavi, Ben Haim’s agent. His background has been covered profusely (see articles by SJ Maskell and Micah Hall, two pompey fans, for example) but suffice to say Zahavi has stuck his gold-sniffing beak into Pompey’s affairs for more than a decade and look where we are today.

Of course Zahavi and the other football agents are not solely to blame for our current plight either but they haven’t helped, either by their reputation or actions.

Zahavi for instance was once famously caught chatting in the swanky Les Ambassadeurs club in London with David Lampitt (our ex CEO and currently head of Supporters Direct) and notorious fellow football agent Kia Joorabchrian in 2008. Lampitt claimed the meeting was about the FA’s Quest inquiry into dodgy football transfers. Lampitt was finance boss of the FA at the time.

Amongst many other things Zahavi has got some stick (and criminal charges) in the past for his dubious ties to the Brazilian club Corinthians (Joorabchian too) and subsequently to notorious Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

So I would ask the players to ask themselves – Is the advice you are receiving the best solution for the club and yourselves to the present stalemate or biased towards yourselves, and subsequently your agents’ wallets, only? Or, if you won’t listen to Trevor Birch, then why not listen to your very own union boss, Gordon Taylor of the PFA.

Earlier this month Taylor did an interview with BBC Radio Solent and his message to the players was clear and simple: Compromise or get nothing.

"A settlement of some money is better than a settlement of nothing at all,……..We've got the future of the club to think of and the employment opportunities that brings - not just for players but for supporters and the club,”.

I remember the players in the last admin in 2010 chipping in cash to save some jobs which UHY’s Andronikou had axed. I remember some players foregoing contract clauses to save the club money. In other words they paid out money to try to save the club and staff jobs. This present residual bunch don’t sadly seem to be of the same stock.

A few players have left since the season ended and I wish them well with their careers. Those that remain are risking the ignominy of being the final act culprits in ending a 114 year-old football club, not a proud fact to advertise on your cv.

Let’s hope sense prevails within the next fortnight and the players leave with mutually agreed repayment deals. Then hopefully the Trust will then win the bidding contest to become Pompey’s new owners.

The Trust’s 5-year mission: to explore new worlds of financial integrity and to boldly go where no Portsmouth Football Club owner has gone before! In other words, run the club within its means and make it a true reflection of our city.

Portus-eg 22/7/12. All views expressed are mine.

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Portsmouth FC - The Road to Ruin

2012-07-13T15:45:00.002-07:00

Portsmouth Football Club.

Those three words have dominated my life for more than 50 years. It was love at first sight (or blight depending on how you regard masochism) and I have been there for it during the bad times it had as it was there for me during mine.

I, like many others, am proud to be a Pompey fan and am sick to death with my club being seen in some quarters as the role model for cheating or more emphatically by most as the epitome of “How Not To Run A Football Club”.

It’s now July 2012 and once again Pompey are in administration, nothing new there. The story of how we got to today’s Greek-style state of affairs has been covered profusely in the media. Check out David Conn ( Guardian) or Matt Scott (Telegraph) who really know their stuff. Also have a look at various articles by Pompey fans Micah Hall and SJ Maskell, excellent stuff. Read them all for full and lurid details.

I don’t intend to replicate the fine work of those mentioned above if I can help it, instead I will just give you my slant on a few aspects of what has gone on in the last 14 years.

A list of the last 14 years of Portsmouth Football Club foreign owners:-

Milan Mandaric (Serb/American businessman) 1998 – 2006

Volatile, mule-headed, loves yellow builder hard hats and sitting in JCB’s, legendary to many fans for gaining Premiership status, friend to wonder dog and Monaco banking sophisticate “Rosie 47” and her “can’t read, can’t write, can’t work the four computers I’ve got in my house” owner Harry Redknapp.

Alexandre “Sacha” Gaydamak (Franco/Russian businessman) – 2006 -2009

Business role model to those who want to hold a hotrod drag meeting in Greenpeace’s car park. After driving seven Brit companies into insolvency in eight years, Sacha somehow started up a Moscow Investment firm in 2003 whose profits were less than a million in 2005, yet in January 2006 he forked out £16m cash to Milan Mandaric and £10m on a clutch of new players. Course it wasn’t your dad Arcady’s money Sacha!

The fact Sacha sold the club on an I O U basis to a potless fake doctor in 2009 says it all really. Nice bloke, has two gorgeous sisters Catherine and Sophie, but made it 8 Brit companies in 11 years he’d cocked up.

Sulaiman Al Fahim ( Dubai ~~grifter~~ businessman) August 2009 – October 2009

The potless fake doctor himself. Constantly pictured with celebrities sporting bemused expressions, the pudgy genial Arab rolled (literally) into town backed up, so he claimed, by a swathe of Middle East investors chomping at the bit to make Pompey one of the biggest clubs in the world. Six weeks later….. .

Last seen scrambling down a grass embankment outside Reading football ground pursued by a few of his Pompey fan admirers. Only new football club owner in history I should think not to take possession of the stadium his new club played in.

Ali “Al Mirage” Al Faraj (Saudi…something anyway...citizen?)October 2009 – February 2010

The only one ever to pass the Premier League’s Fit and Proper Person Test without uttering a word or setting foot in this country. Frontman for the notorious Falcondrone consortium buying the club, the poor sod didn’t even get his name in lights on the club’s board for his trouble. Trumpeted by Pompey’s CEO Peter Storrie at the time as a bloke who would “take us to a level you won’t believe” Al Mirage did achieve that feat but not in the way Storrie imagined I suspect.

Balram “Balu” Chainrai ( Hong Kong businessman) twice between February 2010 – June 2011

The most “reluctant” owner of a business since Kamikaze Pilots Reunion Dinners Ltd opened, Chainrai is on the verge of being PFC’s owner for a third time in two years. Lives on the posh Kadoorie Estate in Hong Kong where he can count martial arts film star Jackie Chan amongst his neighbours. Unsurprisingly the estate is crime free. Chainrai’s sister Bina is a Hong Kong deputy judge and he is close friends with Kumal Bokhary, Hong Kong’s top Supreme Court judge, so there is little need for him to ring the Citizens Advice Bureau for legal advice.

Chainrai divides opinion amongst Pompey fans, half hate him, half see him as a saviour. The hatred stems from the time where Chainrai lent Falcondrone some money in 2009 to apparently keep the club going. Half the fans say the money was of boomerang-like quality and went straight out of the club again back to Chainrai via his BVI-based Portpin without touching the sides at the club. They believe Chainrai was behind the Falcondrone consortium.

Many Pompey fans believe Chainrai (with his Israeli business partner Levi Kushnir) only got involved in Pompey to get money out they were owed by Arcady Gaydamak. Gaydamak, who boasted in an Israeli court that he owned PFC, was ordered in 2009 to pay Chainrai & Kushnir £17m after Arcady had welched on a deal to buy some Ameris Holdings shares. He finally settled up with Chainrai in June 2010.

Portpin was listed in Land Registry documents as the proprietor of Fratton Park stadium itself as from 6.10.09 at the start of Al Faraj’s reign and lawyer Marc Jacob, of the Falcondrone team, was listed c/o Fuglers (where Jacob worked) as the point of contact for Portpin.

Portpin “sold” the deeds to Fratton Park stadium to Portsmouth Football Club Ltd 2010 Ltd (the club version presently in admin) for £7.042m on 7/12/10. Chainrai was chairman of PFC 2010 at the time, whether he actually paid himself via Portpin the £7.042m from club coffers is not known as there are no audited accounts to verify exactly what happened

To make matters worse, Chainrai did have a legal charge (debenture) that the football club was liable to pay him to the tune of £18.6m but events of 12/7/12 have put a curb on Chainrai’s expectations.

Thanks to the Football league saying on that day that only a limited amount of secured debt (debentures) can be passed onto the next PFC company, Chainrai can now only get a % of his £18.6m back (I’m guessing the FL stipulation will be around 15%, or £2.8m, the approximate current commercial value of Fratton Park). Pompey fans, though miffed at the 10 point deduction, aren’t exactly howling at the moon at this injustice being meted out to Chainrai’s wallet.

With the remaining £14m of Premier League parachute payments set to go to the poor football creditors who, bless them, are no doubt by now down to their last Lamborghini, Chainrai must now decide whether to A) up stakes, accept what’s offered for his debenture and disappear onto his next business victim or B) take over the club and try to unite the club with Sacha’s strips of land which are necessary to make the club a viable proposition to sell on, thereby possibly earning him more than he would get by taking option A. Option B is risky, I reckon Chainrai will go for A.

As things are never straight forward with Pompey, Sacha is presently accused by Baker Tilly (Sacha’s PCFC liquidators) and PKF (current admin crew) of not actually paying for the strips of land he owns around Fratton Park. Therefore BT and PKF insist he should pay the £4.9m for the land and are taking legal action to make him do it. It is thought BT will then divide that money amongst the unpaid creditors from PCFC (less their fees of course!).

This may explain Sacha’s recent actions of starting to close down PCFC’s UK parent company, Miland Developments 2004 Ltd, and is selling off its assets (mainly the strips of land around FP).

Only at Pompey would an ex-chairman try to flog land he doesn’t own.

Vladimir Antonov (Russian Banker/Businessman) June 2011 – November 2011

Another glowing testimonial for the Fit and Proper Person Test. The whole world and even Rosie 47 knew the dubious nature of Antonov’s past but not the Football League apparently who said they “didn’t have the resources to conduct a full investigation” into Antonov’s history. If I had known this I would have paid for their dongle top up myself and given them the phone number for the Financial Services Authority.

With his dad full of bullet holes, courtesy of some Chechen hitmen, and Junior being forced to sell his stake in Conversbank due to the nature of how he got it in the first place, surely the Football League could see Antonov was not your ordinary run-of-the-mill owner. The list of Antonov’s friends reads like a Who’s Who of dodgy Russian oligarchs. After his arrest in November on charges of fraud and theft from his bank Snoras to the tune of more than a billion pounds, Antonov stated he didn’t want to be extradited to Lithuania to face charges as he “feared he would be shot”, not an everyday phrase bandied about often in FL headquarters I would wager.

Since November 2011 Roman Dubov, one of the Convers Sports Initiatives (CSI - Antonov’s firm used to buy PFC) team, took over the reins for a short while. Other members of CSI disappeared quicker than Wayne Rooney spotting a woman in a PVC coat. For example Chris Akers, ex Leeds CEO got out before Christmas. The club then went into admin in February 2012 and there we are today.

As I have said above, do read the full story written by the excellent writers I mentioned above for the finer details of the Falcondrone consortium and its dubious composition plus Portpin’s loan, Sacha’s meteoric rise from small business’s Grim Reaper to a pan global investor (without his dad’s help of course), Al Faraj and his incredible magic trick of disappearing off the face of the earth for four months, Al Fahim and his amazing knack of conjuring investors from thin air while emitting hot air, Antonov and his love of cars, cars, cars and…..cars with the odd fraud and assassination attempts thrown in for good measure and last, but not least, Chainrai who really does seem to have mastered the art of conjuring up money from thin air.

It would make a good film! Meanwhile, I will now make a few observations of a few little known trivial facts and some of the more well-known aspects about the participants in Pompey historic nosedive into football infamy. The opinions I express throughout this narrative are mine.

Portus-Eg Productions Proudly Presents “Pompey - Comedy Of Errants”

· Of the last eight owners Pompey have had, Sacha was the only one who paid more than a quid for the club ( see what I mean about his business acumen?).

· Andrew ”I’ve got a buyer lined up” Andronikou (AA) of insolvency firm UHY is certainly popular with Balu Chainrai but not I suggest with Her Majestys Revenues and Customs (HMRC). AA was appointed administrator of Portsmouth City Football Club in 2010 but only after overcoming an objection from the HMRC to his appointment. Move on to February 2012 and Chainrai offered a £500,000 carrot to pump into Pompey in the High Court but only if AA was appointed admin. Judge Norris, obviously not a vegan at heart, refused the offer by appointing PKF as administrators, delighting the HMRC who had again objected to AA’s appointment. I wonder if the HMRC take extra special interest in AA’s tax returns?

· UHY and Chainrai seem to have a lot in common. They have both had the same firm of lawyers twice. First it was Balsara & Co (now Royds Llp) back in 2010 then it was Walker Morris when AA was appointed admin to CSI in November 2011. Not only that, Roshan Chainani, assistant manager at Chainrai’s brother Deepak’s Hari Exporters & Importers Ltd, used to work for UHY as a junior administrator in the Turnaround & Recovery dept in July & August 2010 when Pompey were in admin. Cosy.

· John Redgate, PFC Finance Director until February this year, was appointed by the then PFC administrator Andrew Andronikou of UHY in 2010 as secretary to start with. “Jonah” John has a business track record to rival Sacha, nine of the 12 companies he has been involved with have gone bust. Guess who was administrator for six of them?

· Milan Mandaric was a close friend of the late George Best, helping him battle his alcoholism on more than one occasion. Milan is godfather to Best’s son Calum Milan Best.

· Arcady Gaydamak has a room named after him at the Louvre in Paris. Officials at Fratton Park have denied the laundry room at the stadium is too.

· When Mandaric was at Pompey, the 1999 Milan Mandaric Revocable Trust (MMRT) was our ultimate parent company. Gregg Hawker, a Chicago lawyer and former USA international Steven N Frank were the other two members of that trust. That MMRT is still around today and it has spawned quite a few moneymaking babies including UK Football Investments Llc, MMRT 2006 & MMRT 2008 which Milan has used to take over Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday since he left Pompey in 2006.

· Milan Mandaric has pushed it at times in business. In 2002 for example he and a Serbian friend paid £800k via Mandaric’s Puerto-Rico based Bank of South East Europe for the Development Bank (Razvojna Bank) in his home town of Novi Sad just after the government had opened up banks to private ownership. Under the deal Milan was supposed to pay a further £1.2m within two years. Milan sold the bank for a tidy £25m in 2005. Disgruntled Serbian officials claim Milan and his mate never paid the second part of the deal. The enquiry rumbles on today, the Bank of South East Europe long gone.

· David Chissick, ex-vice chairman at FP during Sacha’s early days, owns a company called CMate who, in partnership with Celador, produced the interactive version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”. Officials have denied rumours that Al Fahim and the Al Faraj brothers were their best customers. Bruce Vandenburg, later to become a Pompey director, was on the Celador team at the time.

· Ahmed Al Faraj, brother of the forever mute Ali Al Faraj, surprisingly did exist and it was he who took part in club business on Ali’s behalf. Like his bro, Ahmed hardly ranks amongst leading Saudi businessmen. One of the addresses he gave to Companies House belonged to Fresco Ltd, a catering equipment supplier in Riyadh.

· After Antonov’s arrest on November 16^th 2011, Chainrai sprang into action and within nine days Portpin had lodged two legal charges against CSI and all their assets including PFC 2010. In the charges Chainrai was allowed to appoint his own administrator for CSI – step up our old friend Andrew Andronikou of UHY . So far not a single CSI asset has been sold and the main moneyspinner, North One Sport, lost the gold-laden franchise to screen the World Rally Championship after a Qatari-based bidder dropped out. Nice work Andy! Shouldn’t be surprised though, it took AA two years to sign off the fully paid-up CVA at Swindon where AA had been admin too.

· Sacha first put the club up for sale in January 2008, denied by the club. Pompey officially went up for sale just before Christmas 2008. The asking price, according to a commissioned PKF report for MarketMerger.com, put the asking price at a staggering £109m, thereby potentially “trousering a huge £61m profit for Sacha Gaydamak” according to the report. Within a year he had sold it to Sulaiman Al Fahim for….a Memorandum Of Understanding (a business world IOU).

· When Sacha’s Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd were liquidated in February 2011 a team from Insolvency specialists Baker Tilly were appointed liquidators. By coincidence Baker Tilly were also auditors for Sacha’s Moscow outfit Antanta Securities.

· Pompey’s immediate UK parent company during Sacha’s reign was a company he owned called Miland Development 2004 Ltd (MD 2004). MD 2004 and Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd both showed in their accounts the same number of employees in 2006 & 7 (495 & 703 respectively) as you would expect but in 2008 the football club stated it had 635 employees, MD 2004 said there were 754. So who were these 119 ghosts that MD 2004 suddenly said Pompey employed? Who paid their salaries of these anonymous poltergeists?

· Al Fahim is a close friend of Russian chess grand master Anatoly Karpov and sees him regularly in Moscow. Karpov was chairman of the Investment Panel of the Russian Federal Industrial Bank 1999-2003 in Moscow at the same time Arcady Gaydamak was chairman of the Russian Credit Bank in Moscow 2000-2. Pawn to King 2, checking in mate!

· Ali Al Faraj in fact did surface again briefly a month after leaving Pompey in February 2010. Or at least his name did. He was involved (but again never seen) in a property rental business called Airdeny Ltd with yet another member of the Falcondrone team, Israeli lawyer Yoram Yossifoff. BVI-based Airdeny caused many Elvis Presley fans to book into the Heartbreak Hotel by stepping on the Blue Suede Shoes of the Elvisly Yours memorabilia store in London when they drastically raised the rent on becoming new landlords. The store had to close as a result, accusing Airdeny of having Wooden Hearts. Hollywood had James Stewart and his invisible six-foot rabbit friend Harvey, Pompey had Yoram Yossifoff and Ali Al Faraj.

· Airdeny were a subsidiary of Galaxypeak ltd (also BVI). Both companies, as were Falcondrone, used corporate services outfit Commonwealth Trust Ltd who have been hauled over the coals on more than one occasion by the BVI Financial Services Commission for failing to carry out sufficient due diligence on the companies they managed.

· Yossifoff has worked with Ahmed Al Faraj too on a few things too including co-funding a film called "Dinner With My Sisters". Reports that they are bringing out a film based on Falcondrone called “Lords of the Scamming Ring” have been denied.

· If there was a film made about Pompey then David Chissick’s brother Johnathon would be the man to see. He is in charge of International Distribution at Dreamworks Film Company.

· Mark Jacob (Falcondrone) now works for Miller Rosenflack Llp lawyers. The ex-Fuglers lawyer had worked in the past for Fladgates, Airdeny’s lawyers. Fladgates were also the firm that advised Sacha’s Luxemburg-based firm Belvia Sarl on their £4m buyout of Swiss outfit Global Brands SA in 2008.

· Eastbourne lad Chris Akers, ex Pompey director and part of the failed CSI team, mainly makes his living by flogging clean shell (no bad debt history) companies as a shortcut to firms looking to get listed onto the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) stock exchange. Ought to put him in touch with legendary wannabe Pompey buyer Joseph Cala, the underwater casino king, who wanted to (literally it would seem) float PFC on the US stock market.

· Yossifoff hit the headlines last year as he was named by the GMB union as one of the dodgy landlords in the Southern Cross care home scandal. Reports that current PFC player Kanu was a long-term resident at one of the homes have been refuted.

· Arkady “I’m just an innocent money-laundering arms and diamond dealer” Gaydamak holds passports in five countries including Russia, Israeli, Angola, France and Canada.

· Daniel Azougy, yet another member of the Falcondrone outfit who was brought in as a “consultant” to run Pompey’s finances, is a former Israeli lawyer jailed for fraud and deception in 2001. In 2002 he somehow managed to get disqualified by the Israel Bar Association from being a lawyer for 14 years for showing false documents to judges, a trait he repeated a few years later to the Israeli Stock Exchange which earnt him a fine and suspended prison sentence. On banging Azougy up in 2001 Judge David Rozen, described Azougy as: "A sophisticated lawyer willing to do anything to reach his own personal goals. He lied, cheated, used a forged document and stole money from his clients." Pretty generic statement about the legal system as a whole I reckon so why was Azougy disbarred then?

· Roman Dubov, London-based ex Pompey director left holding the CSI baby after Akers and Antonov scarpered, is doing okay post-Pompey thank you very much. As well as running a plethora of UK based companies Dubov is currently advising big-spending Anzhi Makhachkala FC, the Russian team owned by billionaire Suleiman Kerimov. However suggestions that Samuel E’too was to come on loan to Pompey have been rebuffed. As well as three Russian banks Dubov also has a partnership with Russian outfit Prosport Management, run by Anzhi agent German Tkachenko.

· PKF, Pompey’s current admin outfit, were caught tapping Karren Brady’s phone during the recent West Ham/Spurs/Olympic Stadium saga. In a possibly connected incident Trading Standards are investigating a batch of phone sex CD’s being sold on Ebay after customers complained on a rip off. “They are only 30 seconds long and I am sure it was looped “said one disgruntled punter

· One of Milan Mandaric’s early Silicon Valley firms in California was fined in the late 1980’s for toxic waste dumping. Rumours that the dumping site was at The Dell in Southampton have been scotched by health officials as there was too much crap in there already to have taken any more.

· It is estimated that £360m plus came into the club during our Premiership stay. We ended our stay £137m in the red. May 31^st 2008 was actually the last time there were a full set of properly audited accounts for any version of Portsmouth Football Club. I wonder why?

The Premiership Dreamland turned out to be a dodgy timeshare deal instead.

Sergei Mavrodi at it again

2012-06-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

Normally I do racing blogs as you know but there is sometimes an occasion where I write about something unconnected to racing, something that interests me and I hope you too. This is one of those occasions.

Sergei Mavrodi at it again!

The Commodores did a great song called “Three Times A Lady” back in the 1970’s. Perhaps now they will rehash it for russian Ponzi scheme supremo Sergei Mavrodi and call it “Three Times He’s Shady”.

For 56 year old muscovite Sergei Panteleyevich Mavrodi has just gone and done it again to investors like he did in Russia’s first ever Ponzi scheme back in the early 1990’s. Mavrodi has used the same company name again, the same method of getting in the money but this time with a novel twist. Mavrodi himself on his website brazenly told everyone that his MMM2011 (started January 2011) scheme was a Ponzi scheme! Yet incredibly punters by the million( estimates range between 10-35 million) have poured their money into his MMM2011 scheme, knowing full well they might not get their money back.

Sadly, like the end result of the original MMM scheme which went wrong spectacularly in 1994, the MMM2011 scheme came to a grinding halt at the beginning of this month amidst rumblings of a criminal investigation and a growing legion of disgruntled investors.

Amazingly the unfazed Mavrodi immediately announced he has now started up MMM2012, whose funds will be used to reimburse those investors who have lost out in the MMM2011 scheme - maybe! For Mavrodi has said the MM2012 scheme will “hopefully” make up for losses incurred by those investing through MMM2011! Comforting!

But why have so many people invested again in a Mavrodi Ponzi scheme, possibly for the third time at that? After all, Mavrodi’s last scheme had failed spectacularly and had been widely reported, even in Russia. It may be interesting to look at the background to the original Mavrodi Ponzi scheme and the man himself.

Sergei Mavrodi-Pre MMM

Mavrodi was born 11th August, 1955 in Moscow. His father, Panteley Andreyevich Mavrodi, worked as a fitter and his mother, Valentina Fyodorovna, worked as an economist.

Born with a bilateral heart disease, doctors forecasted Mavrodi would be lucky to reach the age of eighteen.

Renowned for his remarkable memory, Mavrodi left secondary school in 1972 and went to the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering. There Mavrodi showed a prowess for business and started a profitable trade in flogging foreign-made jeans to fellow students.

After graduating in the early 1980’s, Mavrodi carried on with his fledgling sales business by selling videos in the local market. In 1983 Mavrodi had his first brush with the law when he was arrested by the Department in Fighting Against Thefts of Socialistic Property for “illegal engagement in entrepreneurial activity” and jailed for ten days.

MMM - The Beginning

1989 saw Sergei Mavrodi set up MMM . It is said by some the company was named after the initials of the three people who set it up, namely Sergei Mavrodi, his brother Vyacheslav and Olga Melnikova. Others say MMM stands for “We Can Do A Lot” in Russian.

First off MMM initially sold imported office furniture and computers but soon turned their hand to other things as the business faltered. In January 1992, MMM was accused of tax avoidance by the police. The company had started having difficulties financing its foreign trade so Sergei and his co-directors decided to try their luck in the financial sector.

At first MMM had no more luck in this field than the one they had just left. An abortive attempt to flog American stocks to Russian investors flopped as did their attempt in trying to collect vouchers during privatization in Russia and selling them on.

Sergei Mavrodi meanwhile had noted how other fellow countrymen had got rich and he had no intention of missing out. His lifelong aptitude for figures came to the fore and it was then in 1993 he came up with the idea which became Russia’s first ever Ponzi scheme.

MMM – The Original

Russia back in the early 1990’s was finding its feet in the capitalist world. The opportunistic Russian oligarchs were making hay and money on global resources markets but the ordinary working people were eager to earn money too but didn’t know how to go about it .

Mavrodi identified this burning desire in autumn 1993 and launched a nationwide TV and billboard campaign trumpeting his scheme. These 60-second ads featuring ordinary Russians whose lives magically improved after they bought MMM’s stock and they certainly captured the nation’s imagination. Mavrodi also as a PR stunt organized a day of free rides for people on the Moscow Metro.

Lavish promises, in your face advertising, glamorous rewards all proved too intoxicating for the Russian public and Mavrodi’s scheme sucked in between 10 to 15 million depositors at its peak who heads were turned by the promise of a THOUSAND percent increase on their stake money.

Pictures in the media of that time showed massive queues waiting to buy MMM stock when they finally became available to buy in February 1994. The advertising had worked its magic, the bait was taken.

The scheme was simple. All an investor had to do was to exchange real money for MMM “shares” and sit back as the dividends roll in. There were also significant bonuses paid for recruiting new “investors”, and new members’ funds were supposed to be used to pay dividends to those who had already bought their shares.

As MMM stocks were not quoted on any stock exchange Mavrodi could determine the price for his shares and these shares apparently maintained an unbelievable price growth equivalent to the promised 1000% a year. The public, hardly believing their luck, fervently believed that their investments in MMM shares were profitable and safe so the pyramid escalated rapidly.

So popular was Mavrodi’s brainchild (he claimed it was his own creation) proving that MMM’s wealth at one point accounted for one third of Russia’s total budget.

But the saying “Too good to be true” was never more fitting than in this case.

For, on July, 22, 1994 the police suddenly closed down the MMM offices for tax evasion charges dating back from 1992 including a $26m tax bill run up by a MMM subsidiary Invest-Consulting. MMM itself at that time owed hundreds of millions of dollars to its investors.

Thousands of shell-shocked people ended up losing their homes and found themselves living on the streets as they had re-mortgaged their houses and invested in MMM. Others found the collapse of their life savings investment too much to bear and more than fifty people committed suicide as a result of the MMM crash.

Mavrodi meanwhile was doing his best to wriggle out of the tax evasion charges he faced. He was jailed initially but was released in 1995 to run for parliament, thereby gaining himself immunity from the charges at the same time if he was successful. He did get elected largely due to his promise to spend $10m on Moscow suburb regeneration. He was helped by his pleas that MMM was brought down by a government plot, thereby garnering support amongst the desperate 25% of the districts electorate who were MMM investors.

A year later though Mavrodi was stripped of his Duma parliamentary seat ( the first action of its kind) and the police resumed their investigation into MMM affairs.

Mavrodi wasn’t giving up easily though so he in 1996 he applied unsuccessfully to become a presidential candidate.

The police in fact closed the case in 1997 but a year later the Russian Prosecutor Office re-opened the case and wanted Mevrodi brought in for questioning but found he had disappeared.

Mavrodi maintains he was in a rented central Moscow flat the whole time the authorities were looking for him(6 years). Meanwhile MMM had officially been declared bankrupt at the end of 1997 and questions were being asked “where had all the investors’ money gone?”.

Post MMM – Stock Generation Ltd

During his “exile” Mavrodi was still thinking of ways to make money. He also claims during this period that he was diagnosed with cancer, refused chemo and ended up curing himself.

Finally, in 1998, Mavrodi came up with Stock Generation, an internet-based “investors game”. Oksana Pavlyuchenko, sister of Mavrodi’s beauty queen wife Yelena, helped in this enterprise.

Stock Generation was a website that ran from 1998 to early 2000 and is now part of Internet folk lore as the longest-running, most infamous Ponzi scheme in the history of the Internet. Stock Generation allowed people to trade "virtual companies" using real money and promised enormous returns on investment and its main target audience was the USA and Western Europe.

The “rewards” on offer by Stock Generation were far more demure than the MMM original but they still exceeded the norm in this field by a wide margin. 270% was not considered normal by SEC standards in the US and they smelled a rat.

But, as Stock Generation was advertised as a game the SEC had difficulties at first in stopping the website. The SEC to their dismay found the Massachusetts District Court overruling their objection to Stock Generation ltd though the SEC finally managed to close down the site in June 2000 but not until 275,000 investors had lost an estimated $5.5m between them. Mavrodi was fined $1.3m by the US court for the fraud. The SEC finally gained a permanent injunction against Stock Generation in 2003 but by then Mavrodi had other things to occupy his mind.

Jailed at last

In January 2003 Sergei Mavrodi was finally arrested outside his Moscow flat, apparently sporting a wig and holding a false passport in the name of St Petersburg resident Yury Zaytsev. He was put in Matrosskaya Prison where he would remain for the next four and a half years.

Such was the volume of evidence that the police and the Prosecution Office had to gather to present their case against Mavrodi that it wasn’t until April 2007 that the case was heard in court.

Judge Nadezhda Markina of the Chertanovsky District Court said Mavrodi had defrauded MMM investors “by deception, betrayal and abuse of trust” while delivering her 820-page verdict. Though Mavrodi was found guilty of defrauding MMM investors out of 110m rubles ($4.3m) Investigators estimated that in reality Mavrodi made off with up to $100 million. He was fined 10,000 rubles and sentenced to four and a half years in a penal colony but, as Mavrodi had already been in prison for almost that long anyway, he was released a month later.

Mavrodi hadn’t been idle in prison. He wrote poems, songs, plays and film scripts as well as a book called ‘Son Of Lucifer’. He also found time to divorce his wife Yelena in 2005.

On leaving prison he published a book called ‘Temptation’. Whether this was a sly dig by Mavrodi is not known but the authorities took a dim view anyway and confiscated the rights to the 7,000 published copies.

In 2011 a film was made called “PiraMMMida” which was based on the Ponzi scheme engineered by Mavrodi. It was produced by noted director El'dar Salavatov with Alexey Serebryakov playing the lead role.

MMM 2011 – Groundhog Day!

January 2011 saw the reincarnation of many a Russians’ ruin – another Mavrodi MMM fraud.

Same name, same idea but with a few variations to freshen it up to appeal to today’s more IT savvy audience. No doubt a few of those who have joined the MMM 2011 scheme are the children of those caught first time round back in 1994.

This time though Mavrodi was a little more circumspect in how he portrayed his scheme to avoid a crackdown by the authorities and to just how people would make money.

Again the simplicity is key in Mavrodi’s sales pitch.

For example, those who deposited in MMM 2011 would be paid solely from funds invested by other depositors, There would be no attempt to generate income in any other way. This, according to Mavrodi, was perfectly all right, and no different than the way some institutions in Global finance did business with each other, like the Russian Pension Fund to the US Federal Reserve.

Would-be investors, sickened by the banks’ incompetence in the past few years, lapped it up.

As MMM2011 is internet based, unregistered and the transactions pass from one private investors’ cyber wallet to another. Authorities were having a hard time pinning it down.

Again it’s the simplicity that is the key to MMM2011 and taking a leaf straight out of the multi-tier marketing manual. Early investors invite 10 more to join and he gets a cut from their deposits. Those fresh ten get more in, takes a cut etc etc. The first early investors could end up running an army of 100,000 or even a million.

Plus Mavrodi was openly stating on his website that MMM2011 offered no cast iron guarantee anyone would get their money back even if they followed the instructions they receive to the letter. He even saucily put “pyramids are dangerous for your financial health” on the front page in bold letters. It cannot be said that wannabe investors were not warned.

Yet people from all over Eastern Europe have ploughed their money into MMM2011. Why?

Authorities are perplexed by the massive MMM2011 uptake.

"You can't ban participants from handing each other money. It's a kind of financial flashmob," Dilyara Ibragimova of the National Agency of Financial Investigations said last year.

Others like noted Russian psychologist Akop Narvazyan have a slightly different view and said people in the MMM2011 were gambling and adventure-seeking and trying to prove how smart they are.

Such was the speed of MMM2011’s expansion that they soon started opening what are called “consulting” offices across the Balkan states and soon crossed the sea and started to tempt the growing UK-based Russian population.

One such MMM2011 consulting office was opened up in March this year at St Clements House, 27 Clements Lane, London. Claiming the honour of doing so was an Alex Baryshev of Odessa but the email contact was for a Victor Trubchik. Whether Trubchik was part of the sales chain is unknown but it is interesting to note that the gmail address he used was registered via an internet firm called Yourstshirts.com to an Ashot Bzdonsky in a tower block in the Mile End, London. Incidentally Bzdonsky also shows up as the register for another internet firm called Whatisacomputervirus.com and his address is a glass shop in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Also mentioned are a Sergey Titov, B.Megunas and a Vladislav Abramovs.

The above paragraph may be a totally innocent arrangement but the fact so many different names appear doesn’t fill the discerning investor with confidence.

It seems the confidence in MMM2011 has dissipated too for, as of May 31^st this year. Mavrodi suspended trading and payments.

“Unfortunately, I have to admit that a panic has started within the System,” Mavrodi wrote on his website, blaming the media for spreading malicious rumors. “This is a pyramid! If everyone rushes to withdraw the money, there is no way there will be enough money for everybody. In fact, it would be the same with any bank.”

The fact that Moscow prosecutors and other regions in Russia are now starting serious investigation into MMM2011 affairs may also have something to do with the suspension of trading.

Russian newspaper reports that prosecutors in Moscow have filed a preliminary charge of attempted fraud against Mavrodi while police in Novosibirsk have filed charges of an incitement to fraud against an MMM-2011 investor who had been arrested for collecting $300,000 from potential investors and pocketing 20% for himself.

But, as it always seems with Mavrodi, he remains upbeat and thick-skinned. For Mavrodi has now launched a new Ponzi scheme MMM-2012.

This new scheme, Mavrodi said, would be used to prop up MMM-2011. “Don’t worry, don’t be nervous, we will fix everything, and you’ll get paid in full,” Mavrodi wrote on his website to reassure restless MMM2011 investors but promptly ruined the desired effect by adding: “This is not a promise, just a feeling I have.”

Comments, and corrections, are always welcome.