by



Last season, RFN reported about the alleged involvement of Russian gangsters money laundering through a Portuguese second division side. Quite rightly, the European football establishment was appalled. However, this is not the first and certainly not the most high profile involvement of Russian bad guys in European football.

In his new book; Thief In Law, a guide to Russian prison tattoos and Russian-speaking organised crime gangs, Mark Bullen gives us a rundown of how the Russian Federation of the early 1990’s became a Mafia state and how the men who profited in that era went on to infect the rest of the world with their criminal aspirations. This even included the fairytale land of the English Premier League.

The background to the story starts when Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano arrived at West Ham on transfer deadline day in August 2006, shocking football fans around the world. The Hammers of 2006 weren’t a team who challenged for Europe as they are today. Instead, they were the perennial yo-yo club, constantly battling relegation and were renowned for signing flop players for big money, such as the legendary “Mad” Marco Boogers with his caravan and later the ultimate sicknote, Kieron Dyer, bought for £6million, Dyer would give the club 30 games and no goals in his four seasons, all the while being the club’s top earner on £83k a week! However here were two world-class South Americans turning up on transfer deadline day, for West Ham fans it was amazing, but something smelt fishy and it certainly was.

A few months later details of the shadiness of the deal came to light, it turned out that Tevez wasn’t owned by Corinthians at all, instead, he was partly owned at the time of the sale, (and it turned out was still partly owned,) by a company called Media Sports Investment. The controversies eventually led to the Premier League banning third-party-ownerships in 2008 and the whole affair seemed to drag on for most of the season, West Ham went on to receive a record £5.5m fine, but crucially no point reduction. The case seemed closed, but the scandal would have one more day in the limelight, when on the final day of the season, West Ham went to Old Trafford and beat United 1-0 with a Tevez goal, this changed things. Sheffield United were relegated back to the Championship in West Ham’s place and they, along with many others in English football weren’t happy. Sheffield United subsequently sued West Ham winning £20m or so in compensation, but the Hammers stayed up and Tevez and Mascherano moved on to bigger and better things.

But who were Media Sports Investments or MSI? Kia Joorabchian was the man whose name was linked to the organization, an Iranian, living and educated in Britain, he was an unknown in the world of football. However, the true financial backers to this now-disbanded company came from Russia. Roman Abramovich was rumored to have a stake but this was never proved. The men behind the group were notorious gangster-oligarch Boris Berezovsky and his fellow wanted-man, Badri Patarkatsishvili. Both are now dead, but that’s not their only similarity, both spent the last years of their lives wanted for crimes committed in Russia in the 1990’s. Putin’s rise to power would proved to be the undoing of both men, as it would for many of the other gangsters of the 1990’s. Both were formally Russia’s and Georgia’s richest men respectively and both enjoyed a meteoric rise to power and riches in the chaos of the early 1990’s. These two crime figures had their fingers in many pies and in the early 2000’s while living in exile, football became one of them.

Berezovsky’s stated in a London court that following Abramovich’s acquisition of Chelsea in 2003, he looked to the Chelsea owner for advice on how to get into football. He could smell the money and Brazilian football became his first target; in 2004 through MSI, the Russian businessmen struck a deal with the near bankrupt Corinthians. He agreed to repay the club’s $20m debts and invest a further $15m. All the pair wanted in exchange was 51% of all profits the club made from transfers and any other activity for the next 10 years. A classic “Tony Soprano-esque” business deal.

Unlike Berezovsky, Patarkasishvali was no stranger to football. He owned Georgia’s Premier Club, Dinamo Tbilisi and was also president of the Georgian Olympic association. In 2006 through MSI, he attempted to get into the Premier league and buy West Ham, but was beaten in the chase by other dodgy characters from Iceland. It was during the negotiations to buy West Ham he was able to get the ball rolling in the Tevez transfer saga.

The deal was done, and the Russian investors walked away with millions, possibly already recouping most of their original investment in Corinthians. As the FA investigated West Ham, the scandal soon found itself headline news in Brazil too, in 2007 a judge ordered a criminal investigation into the club and their relationship with MSI, at the same time issuing arrest warrants for Berezovsky and other club officials, the judge stated the club conducted its activities; “Using numerous offshore accounts which have the single and well-known intention of distancing the investor and the illicit origin of the resources from their final destination, in this case the purchase and sale of players”. Corinthians and MSI went their separate ways soon after the criminal case began and despite having won the league in 2005, they went on to be relegated in 2007 as the investigation unfolded.

Berezovsky showed little concern for the Brazilian investigation, at the time of his death Interpol had a red notice from Brazilian authorities demanding his arrest and extradition and a formal case had been opened against him in Switzerland, but these investigations joined the queue behind his multiple warrants issued across Russia for mass-fraud, murder, extortion and kidnapping. Berezovsky knew he enjoyed the protection of the British state right up until his suicide at his British mansion in 2013. Five years earlier, Patarkasishvali had died in the UK and although the UK police initially treated his death aged 52, as suspicious, (the Georgian had dined with Berezovsky in Mayfair hours before his death,) the coroner found no evidence to support the police’s concerns and natural causes was stated as the cause of death. Both men made millions for the short involvement with MSI, neither received any punishment and as usual, it was the fans of Corinthians, Sheffield United and arguably, West Ham who suffered.

Dubious people with vast wealth to invest in vanity projects on the one hand, or the sharks who can smell a profit where we only see the beautiful game on the other, these unpleasant individuals will always sadly, pop up in the game we love. The current trend for rich Russians to enjoy sitting in the chairman’s box across all levels of European football is also not diminishing and so I’m sure the scandals at West Ham and UD Leiria won’t be the last we hear of dodgy dealings at board room level. More Tony Soprano-style stories involving Russian businessmen will surely be back in the football headlines sometime soon.

Mark Bullen is a former British police officer and is a now staff writer and editor for Zenit’s official English website. His book Thief in Law is available on Amazon kindle worldwide. Follow Mark on twitter here: @markgbullen.