Yr Ago-Chelsea Face Questins over Unlicensed Agent

[QPR Report]

Speaking of agents not being agents...!

Shaun Wright-Phillips and Chelsea face questions over unlicensed agent• Claims that unlicensed go-between helped set up 2005 deal
• FA investigating, with fines or even points deduction possible

The Football Association is considering whether Shaun Wright-Phillips and Chelsea could face charges for dealing with an unlicensed agent, Mitchell Thomas, when Wright-Phillips moved to Stamford Bridge from Manchester City in July 2005. The investigation by the FA follows the outcome of a case brought by the Law Society against a solicitor, Timothy Drukker, who signed off the paperwork in the Wright‑Phillips deal but paid Thomas part of the £1.2m fee which Chelsea paid him.

If the FA does find that Thomas, the former Tottenham Hotspur and Luton Town defender, was involved in negotiating the deal, they could bring charges against Wright-Phillips and Chelsea. Penalties range from warnings to fines and even points deductions.

The Wright-Phillips transfer is the 17th deal, previously unidentified, handed over to the FA by Quest, the investigators the Premier League hired to conduct the so-called "bungs inquiry" into transfers by its clubs between 1 January 2004 and 31 January 2006. Quest cleared all the other deals, but said more inquiries should be made into No17. At the time, the Wright-Phillips deal was not identified because the Law Society had begun proceedings.

They only reached their conclusion in January, with a finding by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal that Drukker was guilty of "conduct unbecoming a solicitor" during the transfer and in "misleading" Quest when they made inquiries. He was fined £15,000, the tribunal having decided there was no dishonesty on his part but that Drukker's actions "had resulted in the undermining of the Fifa regulations".

Drukker himself told the tribunal he had been asked by "parties close to Shaun Wright-Phillips" to act as his agent when the details of the move to Chelsea had been agreed. Drukker was paid a fee understood to be £1.2m, did not keep any of it and paid it to others including Thomas.

The FA has been taking a strong stance against unlicensed agents in recent years, because it sees licensing as crucial to its ability to regulate the multimillion-pound flows of money in transfers. Chelsea paid City £21m for Wright-Phillips, a huge sum that summer and vital for City who were struggling financially.

Any FA charges would be brought against Wright-Phillips and Chelsea, not Thomas, since the FA cannot take action against unlicensed agents because they are operating outside football's rules. An FA spokesman said: "We are aware of the outcome of these proceedings and are considering what action, if any, may be appropriate in relation to football rules."

Chelsea and Wright-Phillips both denied that Thomas had been involved in the transfer and said that Drukker himself had conducted the negotiations. "We believe we acted appropriately at all times," a Chelsea spokesman said.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/09/shaun-wright-phillips-chelsea-agent

[QPR Report]

David Conn/The Guardian

Wright-Phillips deal offers Quest chance of belated successThe winger's £21m move from City to Chelsea in 2005 involved the use of an unlicensed agent, a tribunal has found

The Football Association is examining whether there are grounds for charging both Shaun Wright-Phillips and Chelsea with using an unlicensed agent, Mitchell Thomas, when Wright-Phillips moved to Chelsea from Manchester City in July 2005. The FA investigation follows the conclusion of disciplinary proceedings by the Law Society against a solicitor, Timothy Drukker, who signed off the deal once the details had been agreed. Drukker told the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal that Chelsea had paid him the agent's fee, believed to be £1.2m, after Wright-Phillips £21m move was concluded, and that he handed part of it over to Thomas.

The FA referred Drukker's involvement in the deal to the Law Society in partnership with Quest, the investigations company which examined all Premier League transfers between 1 January 2004 and 31 January 2006. At the conclusion of that so-called "bungs" inquiry in June 2007, 16 deals were highlighted for further examination by the FA together with another in which the player and clubs involved were not named because "another regulatory authority" was stated to be investigating. That 17th deal can now be revealed as Wright‑Phillips's move to Chelsea, and it was left unidentified because of the ongoing proceedings against Drukker by the Law Society.

The case was finally concluded in January by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which found Drukker guilty of "conduct unbecoming of a solicitor" for the way in which he acted, and fined him £15,000. Only Fifa-licensed agents or qualified solicitors are entitled to act in any way on football transfers, a system the FA guards resolutely because it gives the governing body oversight on all deals and where the money goes. The tribunal found that Drukker had signed the necessary documents to the FA, stating he was exempt from having to hold an agent's licence because he is a solicitor, but that in fact he did not act as a solicitor for Wright-Phillips.

It found that Drukker had not acted dishonestly, but said it was "a very serious matter" because Drukker's actions "had resulted in the undermining of the Fifa regulations in force at the time."

An FA spokesman said this week: "We are aware of the outcome of these proceedings and are now considering what action, if any, may be appropriate in relation to football rules."

That consideration will include the examination by the FA of how far Thomas was involved in the deal. The former Spurs and Luton Town defender is not a licensed football agent, and the FA will be looking into whether he in fact did substantial work on Wright-Phillips's move, then Drukker was brought in at the end to sign off the paperwork, a practice known as "fronting".

The FA has the discretion to impose penalties against players and clubs for breaches of the agency rules, ranging from issuing a warning for minor infringements to fines, or points deductions in the most severe cases. By definition, the governing body has no authority over the unlicensed agent himself.

Quest became keenly interested in the Wright-Phillips transfer when their investigators saw the size of the fee, £1.2m, being paid by Chelsea to Drukker, a solicitor not known for acting on behalf of footballers. They interviewed Chelsea's chairman, Bruce Buck, in November 2006, and Wright-Phillips in February 2007. Quest wrote to Drukker asking him to explain his role, to which, the tribunal found: "He made misleading and inaccurate responses."

Quest then, jointly with the FA, complained to the Law Society, which instituted tribunal proceedings against Drukker in December 2008. The tribunal reached its decision in January, fining him, but accepting his argument that he had not acted dishonestly and had misinterpreted Fifa's agents regulations.

Drukker told the tribunal how he became involved in the move which took Wright-Phillips, 23 at the time, to Roman Abramovich's Chelsea for a £21m fee paid to a then cash-strapped Manchester City.

In early 2004, Drukker said: "He had been approached by persons close to Shaun Wright-Phillips and asked whether he could act as SWP's agent should a transfer opportunity emerge."

He agreed, but did not hear anything further until July 2005. "He had been told that the details of the transfer had been agreed," the tribunal judgment states, "and he was asked to act as agent."

Wright-Phillips signed the deal on 17 July 2005 and, the judgment notes, Drukker signed a contract with Chelsea to act as an agent that same day. He sent an invoice to Chelsea a day later, with Chelsea paying him a fee understood to have been about £1.2m. Drukker told the tribunal that he had not kept any of it. "He stressed that he had not intended to retain nor had he retained any of the fee."

In fact, it is understood, Drukker told the tribunal he had paid the money to other people, including Mitchell Thomas.

The FA has become increasingly determined in recent years to clamp down on activity by unlicensed agents, who have not passed the required exams and do not have the necessary insurance. Clubs and players are now absolutely forbidden from dealing with unlicensed agents for any part of a deal, a rule drawn so tightly as to effectively prohibit anybody who does not have a licence or is not a qualified solicitor becoming involved even in preliminary inquiries.

In July 2008 the FA wrote to all professional clubs with a list of people it believed were involved in transfer activity without holding a licence and warned clubs against dealing with them.

Both Chelsea and Wright-Phillips, speaking through his current representative, denied that they had had any dealings with Thomas over the transfer. Wright-Phillips confirmed that he had been interviewed by Quest, but believed that the deal had been cleared. The player, back at Manchester City since August 2008, argued that Drukker conducted the negotiations for the transfer.

Drukker, in a statement to the Guardian, said the same: "As I was solely responsible for negotiating the financial terms of that transfer I do not see how any charges would arise."

He was not prepared to comment on the tribunal finding or on the size of the fee, nor discuss whether Thomas had any involvement in the deal. Thomas did not return calls to discuss the Wright-Phillips move.

The revelation that this was the 17th deal referred to the FA by Quest comes just days after Fifa stated that it will be taking no action on the 14 transfers the FA referred to the world governing body for investigation because they involved deals with overseas clubs. Wright-Phillips' move to Chelsea was the only one of the 17 which concerned an English player moving between two English clubs and so remained within the FA's jurisdiction. Now that the Law Society has concluded its disciplining of the solicitor who signed off the £21m deal, and passed on his £1.2m fee in part to Mitchell Thomas, the FA will hope that almost three years on, Quest's inquiry may finally produce one concrete result.

The 17th deal
The Football Association's renewal of inquiries into the 2005 Shaun Wright-Phillips transfer is evidence that the governing body has been pursuing the 17 cases passed to it by Quest in June 2007.

The involvement of the Law Society and the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal which concluded only in January also explains why investigations can seem to take so long. The FA decided it had to wait for those proceedings to finish before it could pursue the issues itself.

The 17 cases referred to the FA by Quest were labelled by one FA source at the time "a hospital pass" because they were bound to be difficult and followed an inquiry commissioned by the Premier League, not the FA. However, the FA did make significant inquiries, and went through the details intensively with agents including Pini Zahavi, Barry Silkman, Mike Morris and Jamie Hart.

The FA decided that one case merited advice being given to the parties, and one required no action. Fourteen cases were referred to Fifa, but last week the world governing body said it was taking no action in any of them because too much time had passed since the deals took place. The Wright-Phillips deal is now the only one remaining.

"The FA undertook extensive work in relation to these matters and received full co-operation from the vast majority of the parties involved, including a number of agents. It is significant that we are now in a position to provide some closure to those involved."

www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/mar/10/david-conn-inside-sport-blog

[Macmoish]

Bump...

Nothing happened to Chelsea...Of course re QPR seem a little "stronger"