Kia Joorabchian would like it to be known that his lawsuit against West Ham
United is not about money. It is about principle. He has 7.1 million of
them, apparently, and all were accounted for when he finally got around to
filing his particulars of claim at the High Court of Justice, Chancery
Division.
This document arrived at about 4pm yesterday, even though the lawsuit was
served on West Ham United, the defendants, on January 16. The standard
procedure is that the particulars of claim document arrives within one week
of the suit. West Ham got the defence in quicker, on February 28, which must
be a record.
Anyway, the legal machinations are of interest, but not the heart of the
matter. It is the 7.1 that is the choice part. For a case that is not about
money, that is a specific figure to reach. Joorabchian claims that he was
due £4.5 million as a result of conversations with Eggert Magnússon, the
former West Ham chairman, and Scott Duxbury, the chief executive, that
enabled Carlos Tévez to play in important matches at the end of last season,
and a further £2.6 million after more discussions with Duxbury around the
time of Tévez’s move to Manchester United in August. Clearly, Joorabchian is
not the sort for rounding things up, or down.
Indeed, why should he be? This does, however, make him different from the
driving forces at Sheffield United, who arrive at the problem of suing West
Ham through the FA by a different route, still brandishing a finely honed
sense of injustice but a less finely honed set of ballpark figures, with
room for manoeuvre in the tens of millions.
Depending on the news source, Sheffield United wish for compensation for
relegation totalling anything from £20 million to £50 million. In contrast
with Joorabchian, the club work only in multiples of ten, not decimal
points. Sheffield United seek £20 million according to a report in a local
newspaper, while £30 million seems the going rate in the national press and
the BBC has set a top-end figure of £50 million. No 7.1s here. These are
broad brushstrokes that are being painted and, of course, this case, too, is
not about money. It is, you will recall, a campaign for fairness. And fifty
million quid.
Saying that the fallout from the Tévez transfer from Corinthians, in Brazil,
to West Ham is not about money is a bit like believing that Middle East
policy is not about oil. It is about nothing if it is not about that. As
Joorabchian has admitted in his legal documents, the only reason West Ham
had an exceptional international forward such as Tévez in the first place —
along with Javier Mascherano, his Argentina team-mate and one of the finest
holding midfield players in world football — is because Joorabchian owned
the players through the companies Just Sports Inc (JSI) and Media Sports
Investments (MSI) and had forged a relationship with the previous West Ham
board over his prospective purchase of the club.
The arrival of Tévez and Mascherano became almost a sweetener, an indication
of what benefits would follow were Joorabchian to take charge and use West
Ham as an outlet for the greatest young talent in South America. From the
beginning, Tévez and Mascherano were little more than chattel. Joorabchian’s
business is to own human beings. Is that a matter of principle, too, or is
financial gain his motivation?
The agreement that West Ham wrote to secure the signature of the players did
not bear scrutiny and eight months later, as Tévez’s goals were keeping the
club in the top flight, a record fine of £5.5 million was handed out for
breaching contractual regulations. Since then, while there has been much
fine talk of fairness and decency, the ethics of modern football, honesty
and trust, every mention of Tévez’s name has come with a price tag attached.
When a Premier League disciplinary commission measured West Ham’s crime in
pounds not points — and the club escaped relegation at Sheffield United’s
expense on the final day of the season — the haggling began. Each twist in
the tale has been financially motivated, whatever high-minded posturing has
accompanied it. Newspaper moralists may still call for West Ham’s
relegation, or the reinstatement of Sheffield United, but no one at the
Yorkshire club has been asking for that for months.
An FA panel will decide next month whether it has the jurisdiction over
Sheffield United’s claim and, if it does, it may sit again in June.
Sheffield United could be in Coca-Cola League One by then, unless their form
under Kevin Blackwell, the club’s new manager, improves. If reinstatement
was the aim, how is the FA to replay and rearrange the consequences of 12
months of football across three divisions? More to the point, how could a
club who are seventeenth in the Championship cope with a summary elevation
to the Barclays Premier League? That is why Sheffield United, like
Joorabchian, want money, preferably in a settlement on the steps of the
court, obtained if both parties shout loudly enough.
This has been Joorabchian’s tactic since last summer. He claims to have a
strong case, one that will send shock waves through football. So why conduct
a campaign of vague insinuation through the media, going back to July, when
he threatened to appear on Sheffield United’s side in a High Court hearing.
That did not happen and when West Ham and Joorabchian’s companies met in
August, the settlement resulted in £2 million going into the coffers of the
club, in exchange for the release of Tévez’s registration, which then
facilitated a move to Manchester United. This forms part of Joorabchian’s
claim, with the accusation that West Ham privately agreed to pay back the
money, plus legal fees of £600,000.
However, the question remains, if Joorabchian had so much damning additional
evidence over the Tévez transfer, so many entitlements and fees outstanding
— he was still short of the £4.5 million he says was agreed at the end of
last season, remember — why was this not dealt with, formally, at the time?
Why was nothing put in writing? Joorabchian does seem a very trusting sort
if he is willing to do £7.1 million of business, covering loan fees,
transfer fees, insurance fees and sundry agent’s fees, on trust.
Do West Ham come out of this business well? Not at all. They have rejected
Joorabchian’s allegations, but the mud will stick. Whatever the court
decides, there will always be the suspicion that the Tévez business from
beginning to end was mired in controversy. Even those who are sympathetic to
men who are forced to negotiate the moral cul-de-sacs of the modern game
feel angered by this. West Ham’s regime may have changed twice since Tévez
arrived, but Duxbury remains at the club so they are steered on a day-to-day
basis by a man who may be dragged into court to answer the allegations made
by Joorabchian.
Magnússon, an ally of Björgólfur Gudmundsson, the owner, has sold his interest
and left under a cloud, having been held responsible for some extravagant
business in the transfer market. He was seen as the man left holding the
baby over Tévez when news of the third-party agreements broke, but his
reputation is also sure to take a beating over this. At the moment, though,
it is one man’s word against another’s, and on neither side is there a
character to which neutrals will warm.
The bottom line. Is it possible that a sharp operator such as Joorabchian got
some foolish statements of intent from former board members at West Ham?
Yes. Does anything exist in writing? Not by the sounds of it. “There were
agreements in place,” Joorabchian said last week. “It might have been in
conversations, but it was in front of witnesses.”
At this point, then, before hard evidence has to be produced, the most that
can be said is that Joorabchian and West Ham strayed into the legal
quicksand of the gentlemen’s agreement; the sort of verbal understanding
that ensured that Tim Howard could not play for Everton against Manchester
United, his former club, and Steve Kabba could not play for Watford against
Sheffield United, his former club, last season despite being signed as
permanent transfers. The Premier League investigated both cases but, with
nothing formally in writing, said that further action could not be taken.
Indeed, because West Ham were attempting to persuade Tévez to stay and would
have needed to have kept lines of communication open with Joorabchian, all
conversations could be classed as the meanderings of pre-contractual
negotiation until an executed document is produced.
The Premier League has no plans to investigate the Tévez transfer further
unless there is watertight evidence that new arrangements contravened
regulations. Something on paper may do it; something murmured over cocktails
at Les Ambassadeurs would not.
The Premier League told West Ham to end all third-party agreements over Tévez,
knowing that this would leave them open to legal action from his owners, and
the club would have to deal with that as best they could. There is no shock
that the fallout has been messy and protracted; indeed, it was expected.
As for Joorabchian’s threat that the whole truth will now come out, the only
surprise concerns the implication that Tévez’s owner could not therefore
have disclosed all his evidence to the Premier League panel or the High
Court. If West Ham have been acting as he suggests why has he not broken
ranks until now? What did he have to gain? Particularly when he is so
concerned about matters of principle and not interested for one second in
all that dirty money.
