The CPS, Harry Redknapp & $295,000 In A Monaco Bank Account

Good morning,

I am in true Cyril Fletcher style indebted to HH reader and gentleman Tweeter, @RicciAshoori who has brought to my attention a fascinating twist in the whole Arry Redschnapps & HMRC fiasco.

Some of the information I can share with you is taken from a web site called http://thestory.ie/ a site with a tag line of ‘in search of transparency’. Well if this article is anything to go by they are very close to earning their Junior X-Ray Specs Badge.

The information I’m unable share with you are documents that are probably still subject to a Court Order issued by Southwark Crown Court. So what I’ll do for clarity is simply lift salient chunks of the thestory.ie article and if you want to go a hunting for more it’s far from difficult to find.

“The investigation is part of ‘Operation Apprentice’ a long standing investigation into alleged football corruption.

In 2007, then Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie was arrested — along with then manager Harry Redknapp, then club owner Milan Mandaric (now owner of Sheffield Wednesday), agent Willie McKay and former Portsmouth player Amdy Faye — over allegations of corruption. The five men were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting.

Last year Redknapp, who is the current manager at Tottenham, was charged with “two counts of cheating the public revenue of an estimated £40,000 after voluntarily attending London’s Bishopsgate police station”.

According to The Independent:

Charges concerned two payments, totalling 295,000 US dollars, alleged to have been made from Mandaric to Redknapp via a bank account in Monaco, evading the tax and National Insurance contributions due between April 1, 2002 and November 28, 2007.

Mandaric, now chairman of Leicester, was charged with tax evasion relating to the payment of 295,000 US dollars to another person via a Monaco bank account, evading tax and National Insurance.

Storrie was charged with concealing a signing-on fee for ex-Portsmouth player Amdy Faye by paying it into the midfielder’s bank account.

The allegation related to the transfer of Faye from Auxerre to Fratton Park for £1.5million in August 2003.

For his part, Redknapp sought to have the case against him dismissed in November last year.

But according to these court documents, the Crown Prosecution Service sought the assistance of the US Department of Justice in September 2010 relating to the transfer of $295,000 from the Florida bank account of a company called First Star International to an account held by Redknapp in Monaco.

Also included in a list given by the CPS was one payment by “Rosie 47? of $207,433.73 on February 12, 2008 to Redknapp. This payment was two months after he was arrested in November 2007. The source of another lodgment in June 2002, for $145,000, is unclear.

The CPS requested US authorities to assist them in obtaining information from the bank used by First Star International – the City National Bank of Florida.“

The content of those documents I am unprepared to share on this blog, but as I say, they are out there.

We’ll have a caption comp later :daumen: