Another Day, Another Corruption Probe

By: chris | January 18th, 2008

It’s been a rough week for the smaller(ish) leagues in Europe. Yesterday it was Poland, bringing down the hammer on the clubs guilty of greasing official hands. Today it’s Romania, who are accusing club officials and agents of a bevy of lovely illegalities:

‘The DNA … started criminal investigations on charges of fraud, tax evasion and money laundering against prominent officials of Dinamo and Rapid Bucharest, Otelul Galati and Gloria Bistrita, agents Gheorghe Popescu, Victor and Ioan Becali and lawyer Sica Puscoci,’ the DNA said in a statement on Thursday.

The investigators are reporting that this situation involves the transfers of 12 different players to various clubs, and that a special tax of some sort wasn’t paid afterwards, and the Romanian Football Federation is owed a sum of €600,000. I dunno, the words “special tax” sounds awfully suspicious alone.

This isn’t the first time Popescu has been in trouble, either. When Florin Bratu moved to Galatasaray a few years back, there was some fuzzy paperwork involved and he was found guilty of accidentally pocketing some $400,000 and was forced to both pay it back and resign as an official FIFA agent, giving up his illustrious sash and beanie. I don’t get what the big deal is, I find myself with a few odd hundred thousand in my pocket all the time.

My favorite party in this investigation is definitely Rapid Bucharest owner George Copos, who is both innocent AND untouchable:

‘It’s stupid to presume such a responsibility in our case,’ Copos told reporters. ‘I’m fully confident, nobody can touch me.’

The words “arrogance” and “pomposity” were apparently stricken from George’s lexicon long ago. It’s refreshing to see such candor from the accused.

Personally, having watched the Cristian Chivu saga unfold daily last summer, I’m not surprised one bit by the Becali brothers being involved (the Dastardly Duo being Chivu’s agents). They’re also cousins of highly controversial Romanian “politician” and Steaua Bucharest owner Gigi Becali. As well as business partners with Massimo Moratti, who is quite the slimeball himself, famous for going behind the backs of clubs to negotiate massive pay packets for players in order to avoid paying a market value transfer fee. Pulling the heist with both Chivu and David Suazo this summer alone (he nabbed the duo for under €30m, despite other clubs ready to pay €20m+ for each). Moratti promised Chivu a €5m per annum salary, when Roma had agreed to a deal with Real Madrid (Barca and Real both laughed off his salary demands - that’s bad, real bad).

There were rumors that the Becalis, who have some sort of oil business connection with Moratti, were going to be given a “bonus” of €2-3m for getting Chivu to sign with Inter instead of Real Madrid. One of the Becalis stupidly said on Romanian television that they had been promised by Moratti way back in the summer of ‘06 that he would pay Chivu €5m per annum, which is probably illegal by FIFA standards, and at the least, very unethical. Sketchiness everywhere involving these characters.

(A reader from Romania mentioned there are numerous reports/accusations in the country, and have been for some time, of the agents forcing the best talent of Romania to sign with them, or else the clubs will refuse to sell them abroad, which seems like it could somehow fit in here with that “tax”. Though it isn’t exclusive to Romania. The same has been accused of Lazio and the GEA Sports Agency, headed by Luciano Moggi’s son.)

They may be guilty, they may not be, having seen this in the past (as well as many accusations of other fuzzy happenings), I’m guessing there’s some fire behind this smoke. But I can’t say, what I can say is somewhere in Sicily there is a football club owner smiling his ass off.

* - Thanks to reader Traian, this is a list of some of the transfers in question. Whaddya know, Internazionale is involved.