Financial Fair Play / Profit & Sustainability

[NG32]

Its just a super league by stealth. 

 

Fucking gimps. 

[Deuce]

Sunday Times: The web of offshore companies that allowed Chelsea to cheat the system

 

Quote

The operation that Chelsea carried out to steal a march on their rivals was well-planned and perfectly executed — and it also went entirely against English football’s rules.

No fewer than five opaque offshore companies, four registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and one in Panama, were used to funnel tens of millions of pounds to players, agents and other intermediaries over a seven-year period from 2011 to 2018.

 

The main aim of the undercover scheme was clear: to secure the signings of star players. Secret, off-the-books payments ensured the agents and intermediaries encouraged the players to sign for Chelsea rather than a rival club.

 

Promising young players across Europe and South America were also identified, with offshore companies associated with Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovich, making off-the-books payments to either give the club first refusal on signing those prospects, or by buying a share of their economic rights so that they benefited from any future transfer fee.

 

In none of these cases were the Premier League or the FA informed of the payments, in stark contravention of the rules. This week, the Premier League announced a £10.75million fine as part of a sanction agreement with Chelsea, deciding against any sporting sanctions on the basis that the new owners had self-reported the payments after discovering them during their takeover of the club in 2022, and had fully co-operated.

 

The signing of Eden Hazard, the Belgian winger, in June 2012 illustrates perfectly how the secret Chelsea operation functioned. At the time, he was one of the most in-demand players in Europe, was being courted by Manchester United and indeed had expressed a desire to join them.

His agent, John Bico, had other ideas. United executives refused his demand for a £5million off-the-books payment — on top of his usual agent’s fee — and Hazard ended up signing for Chelsea. The full sanction agreement published by the Premier League details what happened: six months after Hazard joined the London club, one of the Abramovich-associated offshore companies — Leiston Holdings — struck a consultancy agreement with a Dubai-registered entity called Gulf Value FZE, which was linked to Bico.

The money started flowing two months later and kept flowing for more than three years. Hundreds of thousands of euros were paid on seven different occasions, some from Leiston and some from another BVI-registered entity called Cetus, and totalled €6.55million.

 

Chelsea admitted the payments “should be treated as having been made by the club and were in connection with services that Bico provided in respect of Hazard’s transfer” — and that the “payments were not reported to the Premier League”.

 

In August 2013, Chelsea signed the Brazilian midfielder Willian and Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o from Anzhi Makhachkala, and this time it was secret payments to people connected with the Russian club. Two separate payments, totalling €24million, were made by Leiston to two BVI entities known as Fernington Invest Corp and Tobeo Services Inc.

 

“The ultimate recipients of the payments appear to have been persons connected with Anzhi Makhachkala,” the Premier League sanction agreement reported.

 

It was the same modus operandi to the Hazard transfer for other players: pay millions of pounds to agents or other intermediaries to smooth the progress of the transfer. But the money was never declared.

 

Leiston, Cetus and a Panama-registered entity called Greycom were also involved in other payments around the same time, to the Serbian brothers Vlado and Zoran Lemic to help secure the signings of the Brazilians Ramires and David Luiz, the German forward André Schürrle and the Serbian midfielder Nemanja Matic.

 

The scheme paid dividends: during that period Chelsea won two Premier League titles, two FA Cups, the Champions League and the Europa League.

 

The FA chairman at the time of most of those signings was David Bernstein, who was previously chairman of Manchester City, and he believes the revelations now put a question mark against those honours.

 

He told The Sunday Times: “From what I have seen, the offences were fundamental to Chelsea signing certain players and had a considerable effect on the competitions in which they were playing.

 

 “One has to now question the validity of the competitions and the trophies that Chelsea won in that era, and to what extent did they cheat.”

 

Players and even their parents were also paid directly by Leiston and a fifth Abramovich-associated offshore entity called Conibair,  but their identities have not been revealed by the Premier League as the players were under 18 at the time.

 

The Premier League also found several instances where offshore companies linked to Abramovich appeared to break rules on third-party ownership brought in by the league before the 2008-09 season.

 

Chelsea, via Leiston, secretly worked with a well-known agent — not identified in the sanction agreement but named by the BBC’s Panorama in 2020 as Pini Zahavi — to invest in players at clubs across Europe in the hope of sharing profits when they were sold, or securing them at significant discounts for Chelsea. Zahavi declined to comment to Panorama.

 

The extent of the scheme remained undetected until Abramovich was forced to sell Chelsea in May 2022. During the due-diligence process, a raft of undisclosed payments were uncovered and the new owners had no option but to report them to the FA, Premier League and Uefa.

 

In all, there were 36 undisclosed payments totalling £47.5million. There may of course be more transactions that remain unknown — the sanction agreement reveals that some were only uncovered due to media investigations. In October 2024, Chelsea informed the Premier League about allegations that had been put to the club by “media outlets” — The Times and The Guardian — about the Hazard, Willian and Eto’o transfers.

 

The Premier League also makes clear that “the fact that the breaches occurred under different owners does not affect the nature and seriousness of the breaches”, and that liability rests with the club “irrespective of its ownership”.

 

It also talks about “the nature and seriousness of the breaches”, being “obvious and deliberate breaches of the rules… and involved deception and concealment in relation to financial matters”.

For those reasons, Bernstein believes it is “a bit of a cop out” that Chelsea have escaped so lightly.

“You can have new owners but a club’s history remains, and Chelsea’s history has been fundamentally boosted by that period under Roman Abramovich where there was this cheating,” he said.

 

“At first sight, the sanctions do seem out of proportion to those handed out to smaller clubs for profit and sustainability breaches.

“Fining very wealthy clubs does not mean a great deal. What means much more is removing honours and deducting points.”

 

The Premier League sanction agreement makes clear that “the payments… occurred with the knowledge and approval of certain senior former officers and/or directors”.

 

Previous leaked documents have shown that the former Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia, who was in charge of transfers during that period, was aware of the payments.

 

Granovskaia, Abramovich and Bruce Buck, who was Chelsea’s chairman during that time and one of the most influential people in the Premier League, are no longer participants in football and are beyond the jurisdiction of the football authorities now.

 

They refused to participate in the investigation and have all declined to comment about the rule breaches. Should any of them wish to return to football, however, then they would be under its jurisdiction once more an open to charges.

 

[r0cafella]

1 hour ago, Deuce said:

Sunday Times: The web of offshore companies that allowed Chelsea to cheat the system

 

 

Makes perfect sense honestly. Doing this to get around the rules is pretty trivial mind. 

[vexred]

Man City have a back of shirt sponsor. We should have one, along with all the other things like training ground, training kit and stadium. 

[The Prophet]

Eagle Holdings in administration.

[Stifler]

21 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

Eagle Holdings in administration.

Isn’t that the guy who wanted to buy Everton?

[The Prophet]

5 minutes ago, Stifler said:

Isn’t that the guy who wanted to buy Everton?

 

That was 777.

 

Eagle Holdings is Textor. He still has stakes in Lyon, Botafogo and one of the Brussels clubs. 

[madras]

On 22/03/2026 at 17:05, vexred said:

Man City have a back of shirt sponsor. We should have one, along with all the other things like training ground, training kit and stadium. 

Tractor partner, sticking plaster partner, Bog roll partner, pet food partner, Kebab partner, Penny's big titted covered in custard only fans page partner.......you get my drift.

[Stifler]

43 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

That was 777.

 

Eagle Holdings is Textor. He still has stakes in Lyon, Botafogo and one of the Brussels clubs. 

Nah, that’s who I meant, he was also wanting to buy Everton. Damn it, he should have.

[The Prophet]

9 minutes ago, Stifler said:

Nah, that’s who I meant, he was also wanting to buy Everton. Damn it, he should have.

 

Oh really? That could have been fun.

[Cookie1892]

if we sell tonali and gordon this summer for say 80-90 million each

 

does that mean we can go out and spend 200-300 million on new players or has that bit changed now as well?

 

[Chris_R]

1 minute ago, Cookie1892 said:

if we sell tonali and gordon this summer for say 80-90 million each

 

does that mean we can go out and spend 200-300 million on new players or has that bit changed now as well?

 

 

That's not and never has been some kind of cheat code. It has always been based on us selling £100m of players every year for the next few years to fund that £300m today. 

 

People then (conveniently) forget about that deal with the devil when the next year comes round, and we sell another £100m of players. People want that to unlock another spending spree when really it's to cover the previous one.

 

Basically it's a trick you can only use once but you still must cover the expenditure in future windows. I suspect we're spent up and covering previous years now.

[The Prophet]

40 minutes ago, Cookie1892 said:

if we sell tonali and gordon this summer for say 80-90 million each

 

does that mean we can go out and spend 200-300 million on new players or has that bit changed now as well?

 

 

Not necessarily. Player sales are now spread over a three year period.

[Andy84]

2 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

 

Not necessarily. Player sales are now spread over a three year period.

Thought that was purchases? Sales you can just book the value straight on I think 

 

 

Edited March 30 by Andy84

[The Prophet]

1 hour ago, Andy84 said:

Thought that was purchases? Sales you can just book the value straight on I think 

 

 

 

 

They've changed it under SCR so it's a three year rolling average. The rationale is it will prevent firesales, which I don't really agree with.

[Colos Short and Curlies]

8 hours ago, Chris_R said:

 

That's not and never has been some kind of cheat code. It has always been based on us selling £100m of players every year for the next few years to fund that £300m today. 

 

People then (conveniently) forget about that deal with the devil when the next year comes round, and we sell another £100m of players. People want that to unlock another spending spree when really it's to cover the previous one.

 

Basically it's a trick you can only use once but you still must cover the expenditure in future windows. I suspect we're spent up and covering previous years now.

 

I cba to go back to what I worked out in August but under the PSR rules as they were we had plenty left in the Isak well to spend in January or in the summer.

 

It was something like adding £40m amortisation to next year's accounts would be fine for next season and the one after that.

 

As well as the profit you've got to consider to that the amortisation for Isak also drops out of the subsequent season calcs.

[LFEE]

Is it true that Newcastle United are currently negotiating a settlement with UEFA and a fine of €5 -€10 million is expected? 

[r0cafella]

3 minutes ago, LFEE said:

Is it true that Newcastle United are currently negotiating a settlement with UEFA and a fine of €5 -€10 million is expected? 

Maybe, but who cares? Chelsea and Villa have both been fined. Rules stacked against us. 

[The Prophet]

We almost certainly failed UEFA SCR with a circa £90 million loss, so a settlement seems likely.

[geordie_b]

17 minutes ago, LFEE said:

Is it true that Newcastle United are currently negotiating a settlement with UEFA and a fine of €5 -€10 million is expected? 

 

was a 10m fine or Yamal not getting booked in the first leg

[AyeDubbleYoo]

It’s probably worth paying 5-10m to be able to break the rules TBH.  

[LFEE]

How can a woman’s game with 10K in attendance reach a £3m match day revenue? 

 

 

[r0cafella]

2 minutes ago, LFEE said:

How can a woman’s game with 10K in attendance reach a £3m match day revenue? 

 

 

Perfectly normal  

[Nucasol]

1 minute ago, LFEE said:

How can a woman’s game with 10K in attendance reach a £3m match day revenue? 

 

 

Thought that cockroach Jacobs would be slithering around this, no doubt justifying them as a great set of results.

[LFEE]

5 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

Perfectly normal  

It’s £300 per head  The ticket prices will only be £10-20?…