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Newcastle United lose Judicial Review against HMRC

ChrisMcQuillan

by ChrisMcQuillan
in Football

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mighty__mag

mighty__mag

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Seems like its something to do with Thauvin signing. Imagine if we get deducted points because of that hopeless cunt.  :lol:

 

It was Carr who courted him for around 3/4 seasons.

Carr is an arse, should have got rid when we had the chance.

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sbnufc

sbnufc

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Customs chiefs launched a series of dawn raids today as part of an investigation into an alleged £5million tax fraud within football.

 

Officials swept into Newcastle United and West Ham United’s grounds and offices in an inquiry which centres on transfers, agents fees and income tax payments.

 

The probe also involves Marseilles football club in France and is said to include deals for high-profile stars Dimitri Payet and Alou Diarra, who were bought by the Hammers.

 

HMRC said several men within the football industry had been arrested. Among them was Newcastle managing director Lee Charnley, 39, who was held just after 6am at his £350,000 home on the Great Park estate, Gosforth.

 

Toon owner Mike Ashley only found out from the TV news, according to the club’s chief scout Graham Carr, dad of comedian Jimmy. He said: “Mike wouldn’t know what was going on in the office. He’d probably know the gross figures and all that, and how much is paid to agents.

 

“But he would probably leave Lee Charnley to run the club which he’s done very well. It’s a sad day for Newcastle, a real bolt out of the blue. It’s a bit of a shocker.”

 

Carr, 72, admitted he expected to be question but insisted he had nothing to hide.

 

A source said: “He is the last person you would expect to be involved in anything untoward.

 

“He is as straight as a die. Lee would not knowingly do anything wrong in my view. I would put my house on that.”

 

Mr Carr said he compiled report on potential transfer targets, and Mr Charnley then did the deals with the selling club.

 

When the Mirror arrived at Mr Charnley’s home just before 11am a customs investigator was on his hands and knees in the hallway gathering a number of documents.

 

Others were later seen taking documents to vehicles outside.

 

The club’s training ground in Darsley Park, North Tyneside, was also searched by about 20 officers.

 

Newcastle recently won ­promotion to the Premier League under boss Rafa Benitez.

 

The source added: “This could not be worse timed for the club.

 

“Rafa Benitez is busy planning for next season and obviously that means transfer targets.”

 

West Ham’s London Stadium offices and Rush Green training ground were also raided at the same time as Newcastle’s in the operation involving 180 officers.

 

West Ham said: “The club is co-operating fully with HMRC to assist their enquiries. No further comment will be made at this time.”

 

HMRC officials also visited Chelsea FC in West London but the Premier League leaders were said to be helping with inquiries rather than being probed for any wrongdoing.

 

A club spokesman added: “In connection with its wider ­investigation, HMRC has requested certain information which the club will provide.”

 

The investigation is looking at signings made between 2011 and 2017, covering a series of multi-million pound deals.

 

A HMRC spokesman said: ­“Investigators have searched a number of premises in England and arrested the men and also seized business records, financial records, computers and mobile phones.

 

“The French authorities are assisting the UK investigation, have made arrests and several locations have been searched in France. This criminal investigation sends a clear message that, whoever you are, if you commit tax fraud you can expect to face the consequences.”

 

Sources indicated four agents had been arrested in France, though that is yet to be confirmed.

 

Marseilles is said to be at the centre a range of allegations, including embezzlement. Police raids on the club first took place in 2013.

 

Since then more than a dozen transfer deals have been probed and senior directors have been charged. Payet was sold to West Ham by Marseilles for a reported £10.7million in 2015. He returned to the French club this year. The Hammers bought Diarra for an undisclosed fee from Marseilles the same year as Payet.

 

Florian Thauvin was sold to Newcastle for £15million and loaned back to Marseilles for two seasons.

 

A Parliamentary Committee revealed 43 players, 12 clubs and eight agents were the subject of “inquiries” by HMRC earlier this year.

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Figures 1-0 Football

Figures 1-0 Football

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Toon owner Mike Ashley only found out from the TV news, according to the club’s chief scout Graham Carr, dad of comedian Jimmy. He said: “Mike wouldn’t know what was going on in the office. He’d probably know the gross figures and all that, and how much is paid to agents.

 

“But he would probably leave Lee Charnley to run the club which he’s done very well. It’s a sad day for Newcastle, a real bolt out of the blue. It’s a bit of a shocker.”

 

:anguish:

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sbnufc

sbnufc

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Another good read

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/apr/26/hmrc-pressure-football-tax-fraud-investigation-newcastle-west-ham

 

HMRC under pressure to produce results of its football tax fraud investigation

HMRC will know its incursions into football must produce results if it is not be accused of ignoring bigger targets in its sights

 

The dawn raids of Newcastle United and West Ham United offices and shocking announcement by HM Revenue and Customs of a criminal investigation into tax fraud called to mind similar dramas 10 years ago, staged that time by the City of London police.

 

Following years of suspicion that the payment of bungs was rife in the multimillion-pound swirl of English Premier League clubs’ transfer transactions, the force entrusted with investigating high-level financial crimes famously conducted an early-morning raid on the home of the then Portsmouth manager, Harry Redknapp. The Portsmouth owner, Milan Mandaric, was arrested, as were David Sullivan and Karren Brady, the then Birmingham City owner and managing director, now fulfilling similar roles at West Ham. The offices of Newcastle United were raided in that operation too, as were those of Portsmouth and Rangers, and there was the sense, as on Wednesday, that the authorities were about to cleanse monumental wrongdoing lurking beneath the sheen of the beautiful game.

 

The final outcome from that first frenzy of excitement did not establish an encouraging precedent for HMRC’s sensational start this time. Sullivan, scathingly critical of the arrests and conduct of the police, and Brady were cleared of wrongdoing. No proceedings were taken against any club and Mandaric and the former Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie were cleared of tax evasion in 2011. The dawn raids finally produced the separate, famous trial of Redknapp and Mandaric on charges of tax evasion, on which in February 2012 the jury acquitted both men, who left the court free and the City of London police with nothing to show from their inquiry. Redknapp had even successfully challenged the legality of the search warrant, which he complained had been unnecessarily melodramatic, traumatic for his wife and excessively public.

 

Lee Charnley, the Newcastle managing director, has not only suffered a similar public exposure, arrested and his house raided as part of the investigation, but dragged through it just two days after the exhilaration of seeing his club promoted back to the Premier League. Even after Newcastle published a statement in the evening about the HMRC action, the club’s website continued to lead with a picture of delirious players celebrating the 4-1 victory over Preston which clinched promotion, and the headline “Going Up!”

 

As the thinness of the Redknapp prosecution was revealed in court 1 of Southwark crown court five years ago, the irksome thought grew that the City of London police might have had more to be occupying them, given the trillion-pound collapses of banks all around them, whose consequences are still being profoundly felt. HMRC works to its legal restriction that it cannot make public the tax affairs of any individual or organisation, and it did not disclose any details beyond the statement issued early in the morning, which was spectacular enough by its standards. Its officials had arrested “several men working within the professional football industry for a suspected income tax and national insurance fraud”. Its investigators, who numbered 180, had “searched a number of premises in the north-east and south-east of England and arrested the men, and also seized business records, financial records, computers and mobile phones”. The authorities in France were also involved, had made arrests and searched “several locations” – sparking fevered speculation about who the targets might be and what the deals were.

 

Informed sources say that HMRC is intensely aware of the outcome for the City of London police of its 2007 investigation and that the flurry of activity seen on Wednesday would not be undertaken lightly. There is, as football managers such as Rafael Benítez and Redknapp say after early dramas in the football season, a long way to go yet. But similar pressures apply on HMRC to show some results at the end.

 

There is a strange contradiction in football’s modern relationship with tax, a distillation of the Premier League’s conflicted character in English public life. On the one hand, the clubs and league itself trumpet the prodigious amounts of tax they pay as a great virtue and contribution to the public good. There was even a formal “economic impact assessment of the Premier League” conducted by the consultants Ernst and Young of the 2013-14 season, which reported that £2.4bn had been paid in tax and £3.4bn contributed to the UK’s GDP. The legally compulsory payment of PAYE tax and national insurance on the galactic wages paid to Premier League players was presented as the people’s game doing its bit for the public purse in a time of post-financial-crash recession and austerity.

 

Yet at the same time there has been a constant dissatisfaction at HMRC, which has harboured a suspicion that clubs, players and agents can be reluctant payers of tax and users of ruses to avoid it. Wranglings over the payment by clubs to players, often to offshore tax havens, for use of their images, has been a constant rumble of contention between the tax authority and the Premier League for more than a decade. Several clubs and the league itself have been involved in making settlements, and Jon Thompson, the HMRC’s chief executive, told the House of Commons public accounts committee that investigations were continuing into 43 players, eight agents and 12 clubs. Thompson said then that the legitimacy of image rights arrangements, which can involve players from overseas qualifying as “non-domiciles” and receiving their payments offshore, were “the most significant risk in football”. HMRC told the Guardian in November that it had been “successfully tackling tax risks in the football industry”, and in recent years had identified “more than £80m in additional tax payable from clubs, players and agents”.

 

That is a lot of money but, for all the scandal and enormous publicity which attaches to any action by law enforcement authorities against the football “industry”, it is a fraction of the £2.4bn which E&Y calculated the Premier League and its clubs do actually pay every year. The £5m which HMRC says is at stake in this headline-generating investigation amounts to a further fractional slice.

 

Public attitudes have greatly hardened against tax evasion by rich people and corporations during this time of poverty and cuts for many people but HMRC will know its incursions into football must produce results if it is not to be subject to the accusation that it might have had bigger targets in its sights.

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Deuce

Deuce

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Posted

:lol: what fresh hell is this

 

Nufc, a real life soap opera.

 

Back in the prem 5 minutes and the shit begins to fly.

It's insane. :lol: Expect Rafa to sign an extension on Thursday and wild boars to decimate the U-18s on Friday.

 

:lol:

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