The Strangest Takeover Of All Time: Trillion Dollar Fraud At Notts County

in the 2008-09 season knotts county finished 19th in league two the basement division of england's football league it was the fifth successive season in the bottom division for the magpies and they had finished in the bottom half of the table in every single one of them only narrowly avoiding relegation out of the football league altogether on two occasions over the following summer though something quite extraordinary happened at meadowlane svenger and erickson was brought in as the club's new director of football just three years on from managing the england team at a world cup sol campbell was sand on a 40 000 pound a week contract just three years on from having scored in a champions league final for arsenal against barcelona and only one year on from having won the fa cup with portsmouth and promising young danish youth international casper schmeichel arrive for a fee of 1.5 million pounds from premier league outfit manchester city most of you will remember all of this happening and the sheer fascination that surrounded the club at the time but for those of you don't either because you're too young or just because you're based outside of the uk i can only really describe it as feeling like someone had gone into the editor of football manager given a lead to side a load of money some big names and then loaded up the game to see how long it would take to reach the premier league indeed county themselves outlined a five-year plan of their own initially to reach the championship in 2009 which later spiraled into a five-year plan to reach the premier league and you don't need to be a mathematician to realise that was a pretty big ask for a club that was competing in the fourth division every week there seemed to be a new name linked with the club whether it was louis figo pablo nedved or david beckham there was just one problem where was all this money coming from it was a question that would be asked more frequently and more alarmingly as knotts county's fairy tale began to unravel exposing a web of lies mythical middle eastern royals and links to north korea whatever you think is the strangest story you've ever heard about football and we've covered our fair share of pretty bizarre ones on this channel it may no longer hold that title at the end of this video as the extent of the con artistry that surrounded knotts county's takeover in 2009 becomes claire so sit down strap in and brace yourselves for a tale too fantastical to have been written by any novelist or movie director and join me on a journey exploring how a football club in nottinghamshire became wrapped up in a trillion dollar fraud knotts county are a club widely known for just two things being the oldest professional football club in the world and for providing juventus with their famous black and white shirts in 1903 which they have worn ever since the magpies were also the oldest football league team until 2019 when they were relegated from the football league or the efl for the first time having been inaugural members in 1888. founded in 1862 the club itself predates the football association though they weren't founded as a football club at all for the first two years of their existence knotts county played a sport all of their own making before taking to football in 1864. the club's finest hour came a few decades later at goodison park when they beat bolton wanderous 4-1 in the fa cup final more than 125 years on that remains the club's only major trophy and the magpies have spent much of the last century in the third and fourth tears of english football their last stint in the top flight which lasted for just a single season came under neil warnock in the final season before the breakway of the premier league from the football league and over the following 20 years the club is often mired in financial trouble in 2003 it took significant last-minute fundraising from local businessmen women and supporters to keep the club afloat but in 2009 it looked as though the world's oldest professional football club's fortunes were starting to turn around it all started in april 2009 before the 2008 09 season had even drawn to a close with rumors of a potential takeover in early may just one week after knotts county's 200809 campaign had been wrapped up with a 2-1 win against wickham wanderers it was reported that the deal was off prior to that the mysterious investors had apparently been willing to inject 5 million pounds into the club so news that the deal was off came as a crushing blow to fans however it didn't take long for the talks to resume and on july 14th the deal was completed since being bailed out primarily by a local businessman in 2003 county had been owned by the knotts county supporters trust they had some reluctance in handing over the club but finally did so after receiving proof of funds in the form of a 5 million pound guarantee from a london bank to cover the five million pounds that the club's new owners had promised to invest in the club fans were understandably curious and reserved with regards to the identity of their new owners which seemed opaque from the word gap but following decades of stagnation most were willing to roll the dice on the grounds that things couldn't get much worse or so they thought while supporters never got the chance to see the investors behind the scenes the face they would become familiar with was that of peter tripp the former commercial director at everton who was appointed as knott's county's new chairman within a week svengar and erickson arrived on the scene and that was when the press really started to take knotts county seriously whatever was going on at meadow lane clearly it was quite unusual for a league two club in the previous six years knotts county had spent a grand total of 77 000 pounds on acquiring players from other clubs whilst operating on a shoestring budget in terms of their wages in the summer of 2009 the club signed 15 players with casper schmeichel costing the club 1.5 million pounds alone on a deal worth a reported 1 million pound a year in terms of his salary meanwhile sol campbell's contract was widely reported as being worth 40 000 pounds a week almost double the average wage in the premier league at the time these were obscene figures for a le2 team and campbell and schmeichel were just the most high profile of a string of lucrative arrivals whilst the names of the investors had never been disclosed there were rumors about the only official statement that came out of the club described the new owners as certain middle eastern and european-based families which hardly narrows it down initially there had been suggestions within the tabloids that the qatari royal family were behind the bid until the qataris rubbished those claims themselves but the theme of middle eastern royalty persisted the new owners were able to effectively conceal their identity by acquiring the club through a company called munto finance which was often described as being a swiss holdings company at the time it later transpired that monte finance was actually a subsidiary of another company called quad back investments which was registered in the british virgin islands quad back investments claim to represent noted business families and have numerous investments in the middle east japan kazakhstan europe and north america but refuse to disclose the names of their investors for privacy reasons by mid-september with county having gone off to a decent start to the season the pressure to provide more information with regards to the club's mystery men intensified the club sought to provide some clarity with a post on their official website claiming to be from anwar shafi stating that the shafi and hayat families held significant investments with quad back and that they were happy to be diversifying their investments a few days later there was a slight spanner thrown into the works of those claims when anwar shaffy told the guardian that he hadn't authored that statement he held no investments in quad back and they had no involvement in knotts county which didn't look great naturally the press started to look into the hayat family as well to seek clarification from their end but the only hiat that they could find was abid hayat khan a wanted fraudster who was on the run from uk authorities surrounding a 1 million pound fraud surely it couldn't be him could it this was the first slipping of the mask surrounding the circus of knotts county's takeover force but it was just the start abbot hayat khan was an associate of a man called russell king who though wasn't known to those outside of the club at the time was the one pulling the strings at meadow lane though his name didn't appear on any official documentation not even the private documents revealed to knox county supporters trust nor on any of quad back's accounts held in the british virgin islands whenever he has been asked about his involvement with knox county or any of the parties involved in the takeover king has stressed the fact that he holds no official association with any of them and officially this is true it is unclear whether king was always a fraudster or whether he was at one time a legitimate businessman during the 1980s but we do know his first conviction for fraud came in 1991 when he falsely claimed that his aston martin zagato had been stolen and tried to claim 600 000 pounds from his insurers when they found the car in a private garage king didn't get the six hundred thousand pounds but he did get a two-year prison sentence following his release king relocated to jersey where he lived in a 4.5 million pound house with a garage full of luxury cars not that they're much use in jersey which is five miles long nine miles wide and has a maximum speed limit of 40 miles an hour from this moment on it is alleged that king never put his own name to anything again not a shareholding not a directorship not even a bank account instead he went by various different alliances to disguise his identity from official documentation in his internal emails in knotts county king signed off all of his emails as lord v yeah as in lord voldemort from harry potter which apparently became his preferred pseudonym around this time in jersey king had become involved with a company called belgravia financial services group which was said to manage money for wealthy clients across the globe and was a branch of a business called belgravia asset management belgravia financial services group was shut down in 2008 due to concerns about the opaque financial operations they were involved in costing clients millions of pounds when another jersey-based business called close finance came after king for two million pounds he fled from jersey to the kingdom of bahrain it might have seemed as though king had escaped justice but he wasn't about to leave his fraudulent ways behind him just because he had moved 3000 miles to the tiny island of bahrain in the heart of the middle east king began telling people that he was managing the funds of the house of khalifa bahrain's ruling family which is a surefire way to really annoy your hosts the bahraini royals are reportedly worth around four billion dollars giving king a fair amount of clout among those who believed him one such party was first london plc an investment bank based in london which king convinced to part with a 49 stake in the bank in return for billions of pounds of course the billions never arrived but first london added to king's credibility the bank was considered a serious operation with the likes of tory mp tim yeo and a former mo5 director sitting on their board their stature added to king's legitimacy a trick he would use throughout his criminal career remember that five million pound bank guarantee that convinced knotts county supporters trust to sell the club to monto finance well that came in the form of documents signed by first london though it later turned out to be from a department of the bank that had long been shut down and was therefore worthless of course to complete the takeover of knotts county king didn't just need permission from the supporters trust he also had to pass the football league's notoriously stringent fit and proper persons test though of course it wouldn't be king whose proposal they would be examining it would be abit hayat khan remember him the fraudster and associates of kings who was on the run from uk authorities owing one million pounds who was named on knotts county's official website along with anwar shafi who flat out denied any association with the club well it turned out that hayek khan had been posing as a wealthy middle eastern prince from the kingdom of bahrain and the football league hadn't thought to examine muntei finance's 5 million pound proof of funds from a department of a bank that no longer existed that was 49 owned by a fake shake or this supposed middle eastern prince he was about as royal as delboy and was on the run for fraud at this point you might quite reasonably wondering why king's con required knotts county at all he'd already conned first london he had other frauds going on in bahrain wine involve a league 2 football team and start going out trying to sign sol campbell normally this kind of thing is a way for businesses and states to extend soft power but no one knew who was behind one so finance and the state that regulators have been conned into thinking was involved had no idea well the real reason was because king's greatest con was still to come one that would make his aston martin insurance job belgravia investments and first london swindle all pale insulin significance by comparison still under the guise of bahrainia regality king had formed a relationship with the powers that be in the most secretive state on earth north korea in october after king's ties to knott's county had started circulating in the press the club claimed the king had only ever held an advisory role and that they had now severed all ties with him less than a month later sfenger and erickson was boarding a plane to the north korean capital of pyongyang something didn't quite add up in 2009 a company was founded in switzerland named swiss commodity holding or sch for short despite the fact that sch had appeared out of nowhere they claimed to have 1.7 trillion dollars in assets making them the largest mining company on earth the source of the vast fortune that they claimed had been put down to a deal sch had struck with north korea paying the prior state 1 billion dollars in exchange for the right to mine all of the country's gold iron and coal king had the heir of a man called kim yong nam north korea's former ministry of foreign affairs and then president of the presidium of the supreme people's assembly of the democratic people's republic of korea which is one hell of a job title but to cut a long title short it effectively made yongnam one of the two most senior politicians in north korea along with the premier of the cabinet who both serve under the general secretary of the workers party of korea and the supreme leader kim jong-un or his father kim jong-il as it was at the time yongnam had invited king and a delegation said to represent swiss commodity holding to north korea where sven and ko were treated to a series of banquets with senior government officials in the most distant of the three nations that george w bush famously branded as the axis of evil in 2002. it was actually sch and those trillions in supposed mineable minerals that had been used to bring sven to meadow lane in the first place the experienced swede was reportedly paid 11 million euros or 9 million pounds of shares in sch as part of his deal to join the club as director of football along with supposed shares in the club itself and a reported 2 million pound annual contract the shares that sven received in sch would very quickly become worthless as the fake man and company became caught up in this scandal which ultimately saw first london bango to the wall when sven resigned in february 2010 by which stage knotts county had already been put up for sale by munso finance he waived the millions of pounds that he was owed in order to assist with the sale of the club in what could be perceived as either an act of generosity or simply an acknowledgement that the cash that he had been promised would never be forthcoming sven's suspicions regarding the strength of king's word have been aroused when he discovered that the milk bill hadn't been paid at meadowland something he claims to have inquired about whilst visiting pyongyang and being informed of billion dollar deals with the world's most repressive regime king had gone from failing to colin insurer that his car had been stolen when it was found in a garage to successfully conning the entire north korean government the north koreans even gave king a diplomatic north korean passport in what must have been a highly embarrassing ordeal for north korea once revelation surrounding king emerged whether kim yong-nam was disciplined we shall never know that it appears that he kept his job and even attended the 2018 world cup owning ceremony in moscow as a 90 year old north korean diplomat he finally retired in 2019 aged 91 in the context of the north korea trip sven was a face that was all king always needed a face to lend him legitimacy whether it was the board members of first london or a former england boss it made his fraud all the more believable and it's incredible how many people fell for it of course the one problem was that there was no bahraini cash behind him and his fraud inevitably caught up with him king went on the run back in bahrain resigning from his life of luxury to more modest accommodation rarely venturing outside his apartment block but still carrying out one last fraud whilst knotts county's cash and shake may have been fake the quality that they had signed was not seoul campbell departed after just a single game a defeat away at morkum where he was given the run around by a couple of journeyman center forwards and decided the league two wasn't for him he later returned to arsenal before one last swan song with newcastle united even without seoul and sven though knotts county still romped to the 2009-10 league two title with centerford lee hughes scoring 33 goals though some of the players that they had signed were championship quality county had signed them on lease and no one had made a single payment by the time they lifted the league two title king munto finance and quad back were long gone businessman ray true bought the club from munto in february 2010 taking on seven million pounds of debt prior to his arrival knott's county had been served with two winding up orders by hmrc everyone paid pay payments amounting to more than half a million pounds casper schmeichel's contract was cancelled at the end of the season since county couldn't afford to pay his wages leaving him free to join lead to united on a bossman before he was signed by sven once again just 12 months later at leicester city again for 1.5 million pounds whose asian billions were legitimate and where schmeichel has gone on to become a premier league champion just like his dad meanwhile at knotts county who were now burdened with debt and left in the lurch supposed five-year plans were a distant memory the club survived in league one for four seasons before dropping back down into league team where they remained until 2019 when the unthinkable happened and the magpies suffered their first relegation from the football league they are currently sixth in the national league temple king spent the next eight years in hiding in bahrain giving the authorities a fake address and living off fraudulent newspapers he was apparently able to obtain millions of dollars as well as certain perks and hospitality deals charging vast sums of money to advertise in his newspapers by lying about the size of their circulation and even creating a newspaper called ft business arabia styling the magazine as a middle eastern edition of the financial times despite the fact that it had no link to the actual financial times in 2018 bahraini authorities extirated king back to jersey where he was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay 320 000 pounds or face the possibility of an extra three years in jail sven went on to hold a handful of lucrative managerial positions within the chinese super league before managing the philippines national team and later holding an advisory roller it's around about this time that i have to wrap up but i wanted to say that this video took me almost two days to rain research which is obviously not sustainable given that i make six videos a week even then though there is so much more that i could have discovered and so much that i did discover that i had to leave out but such is life from nottinghamshire to north korea it is without doubt one of the most bizarre surreal and ultimately sad stories from an ox county perspective at least than i have ever covered on the channel i can remember following the knox county story with a fair amount of intrigue at the time even though i was only young but i must admit to having had no idea with regards to the true extent of russell king's web of deception the nefarious characters involved and sven's freakish jolly to north korea it's videos like this that made me wish i could devote much more time to individual topics unearthing new information and bringing them to life but with the time and resources and my disposal i hope you enjoyed this nonetheless and remember if anyone ever tells you that they manage the sovereign wealth fund of a middle eastern emir and the mining company that they founded yesterday is worth two trillion dollars or even that they could reunite roberto carlos and david beckham at knotts county try to scrutinize their claims a bit more closely than the football league before deeming them to be fit and proper people thank you all as ever for tuning in i hope you enjoyed today's video leave a like if that was the case let me know your thoughts down below in the comments and make sure that you are subscribed and have notifications turned on for hrtc7s you can also find me on instagram or twitter by the username at hrtc7s on both should you wish to do so

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 549,373

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, Takeover, Strangest, Notts County, Documentary, Premier League, HITC Sport, Sven, Goran Eriksson, 2009, Sol Campbell, Scandal, Finance, Money, Wages, Transfers, HITC, Sevens, Bahrain, EFL, League Two, North Korea

Id: obOBSDpDuJo

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021