Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric cleared of tax evasion
The Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric, the owner of Sheffield Wednesday, have been cleared of evading tax on payments totalling £189,000 that were made by Mandaric into Redknapp’s offshore bank account while the two men were at Portsmouth football club.
Both Redknapp, who served as manager of Portsmouth, and Mandaric, the club’s former owner, had denied the charges during the three-week trial at Southwark crown court, arguing that the money was given as a gesture of friendship and had nothing to do with Redknapp’s job.
Mandaric and Redknapp embraced in the dock as the verdicts were read out after five hours of deliberations.
Redknapp immediately left the court, while Mandaric walked up to Detective Inspector Dave Manley to shake his hand and say: “Thank you.”
Judge Anthony Leonard made no comment other than to discharge the jury.
The first charge of cheating the public revenue alleged that between 1 April 2002 and 28 November 2007 Mandaric paid $145,000 (£93,100) into the account.
The second charge for the same offence related to a sum of $150,000 (£96,300) allegedly paid between 1 May 2004 and 28 November 2007.
The prosecution had claimed that the two sums represented bonuses for Redknapp and were therefore eligible to have tax paid on them. Redknapp received the first payment from Mandaric, it was said, to make up for money he lost on the profitable sale of Peter Crouch to Aston Villa in 2002.
After Crouch was sold, Portsmouth paid Redknapp a bonus of £115,473, representing 5% of the net profit, with PAYE tax and national insurance deducted. Mandaric acknowledged that Redknapp was unhappy with that figure as he felt he was due 10% of the profits because he had had to work hard to convince his boss to sign Crouch in the first place.
Four days after he received the £115,473 from Portsmouth, Redknapp went to Monaco on Mandaric’s suggestion and personal recommendation to open the bank account.
Redknapp told the court that when asked to chose a password for the account, he had opted for Rosie47, in honour of his pet bulldog and the year of his birth. A month later, Mandaric paid the $145,000 into the Monaco account.
Mandaric described the first payment as “seed money”, given to “do something special for Harry” and intended to help his friend grow profitable investments. He also denied that the second payment of $150,000 was in any way connected to Redknapp’s job, saying it was merely paid into the account because the investments had lost their value and he felt “embarrassed” by the losses, as he had a reputation as shrewd investor.
Redknapp had repeatedly denied being “silly” enough to entertain the notion of avoiding tax, saying he had paid £1m in tax in 2008 and was not “any kind of tax fiddler”. He was, he added, “the most ungreedy person you have ever met in your whole life, ever”.
However, he admitted under cross-examination that he had lied to a News of the World reporter who had challenged him in 2009 about where the money came from by telling him that the first payment was a bonus to make up for the money he had lost on the Crouch sale.
Redknapp, 64, said that he had told Rob Beasley that the money was a bonus – thus contradicting Mandaric’s claim that it was an unrelated investment account – to get rid of the reporter.
“I don’t have to tell Mr Beasley the truth,” Redknapp said. “I have to tell the police the truth, but not Mr Beasley. He’s a News of the World reporter.” He said he had decided to lie because he did not want to read a story in the paper on the day Spurs were due to take on Manchester United in the 2009 League Cup final.
Mandaric, 73, was also adamant that he had never sought to evade tax.
He told the court: “I did not know what the word [evade] means,” adding that over six years his companies paid a total of £55m in taxes.
Redknapp, who underwent minor heart surgery last year to unblock his arteries, is the most successful English manager in the Premier League era, having led Portsmouth to FA Cup success and Spurs to last season’s Uefa Champions League quarter-finals.
Mandaric bought Sheffield Wednesday in 2010, having previously owned Leicester City.
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