Tottenham player arrested for conspiracy to defraud

Police sources told The Daily Telegraph that French Tottenham Hotspur defender, Pascal Chimbonda, who was arrested earlier this week, was interrogated on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud because a transfer of a GBP 500,000 from French Bastia to English Wigan in July 2005.

Chimbonda's transfer from Wigan to English Tottenham in August 2006, when he received GBP 4.5 million, is not part of the investigation.

There was no comment from either club regarding Chimbonda's arrest because neither wanted to influence police investigations.

The arrest is a significant development in the City of London inquiry.

English clubs Newcastle United and Portsmouth and Scottish Glasgow Rangers were raided in July when police stepped up progress in the investigation after a 61 year old Manchester man was arrested for money laundering.

The man from Manchester is on bail until October but it is not clear if Chimbonda's arrest is related to him or to the raids in July.

Police are concentrating on transfer deals involving Willie McKay, the Scottish agent, who acted on behalf of Chimbonda when he transferred from Bastia to Wigan and also when he transferred from Wigan to Tottenham.

Jean-Alain Boumsong's GBP 8.2 million transfer from Glasgow to Newcastle and Amdy Faye's GBP 2 million transfer from English Portsmouth to Newcastle are two more deals that McKay is believed to be involved in.

McKay denies he has done anything wrong but he was linked to three transactions in Lord Stevens bungs investigation involving Premier League transfers: Boumsong, Faye and Aliou Cisse's 2004 move from English Birmingham to Portsmouth.

The Daily Telegraph reported in December that for some time now, officers have been focusing on an inquiry centring on tax fraud and money laundering and all the evidence found in Stevens investigation was given to police under disclosure orders made at the end of last year.

When Stevens released his final report three months ago, he only published 16 of the 17 transfers he was unable to sign off on and the 17th was never made public. It was considered to be so serious that evidence was immediately handed over to the police and the tax authorities. Since then the identity has remained a closely guarded secret.

The City of London's economic crime unit, lead by Detective Chief Inspector Bob Wishart, originally had two full-time officers working on the case. The unit has increased since it was also looking at corruption in horse racing. That case is scheduled to come to court in the next few weeks.

The Stevens inquiry was designed to tackle allegations that Premier League officials were receiving 'bungs' in transfer deals, but this investigation is more focused on tax evasion.

Officials have been working with tax investigators to identify cases where players and agents have been avoiding paying huge tax bills.

In Chimbonda's case, police want to know if he received any of the GBP 500,000 fee that was paid to Bastia and, if so, whether he should have paid tax on it.

Inside Sport learned that in addition to the raids on Rangers, Newcastle and Portsmouth last July, the City of London unit visited Wigan earlier this summer and it is believed that detectives interviewed the club's chief executive, Brenda Spencer, and other club officials in relation to the deal.

It is rumoured that police separately interrogated Paul Jewell, who left Wigan at the end of last season, but was manager when Chimbonda signed on with the club.

Wigan and Tottenham are unhappy with the way the police are handling the investigation. Even though the police said the clubs are in the clear, the way Chimbonda's arrest was made public did not make the clubs happy.

Source: euFootball.BIZ © Copyright 2006 - All rights reserved.