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Chris Samuelson


hippo

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Rumours he could be a permanent member of the board.

If you want to go into conspiracy mode - is he actually the supplier of funds to purchase the club, while presenting Tony Xia as the mega rich squeaky clean front man ? - sounds far far fetched, but thats exactly what happened at Reading. The rich billionaire who supposedly brought the club, just disapeared -   leaving Reading on the verge of bankruptcy.

Not beyond that realms of possibility that the same thing will happen here...

http://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/chris-samuelson-former-reading-fc-11355076

Former Reading FC director Chris Samuelson is understood to be part of the Chinese takeover at Aston Villa.

Samuelson arrived at Madejski Stadium in 2012 and initially was the public face of Anton Zingarevich’s Thames Sport Investment company.

Once TSI’s takeover was complete, Samuelson took up a position on the board at Reading, along with Andrew Obolensky.

Both then left the board in June 2014 after Zingarevich had disappeared, leaving the club in the midst of a perilous financial crisis.

 

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I can't see that being the case. With regulations so tight in China it would be a ludicrous amount of work to make Xia this kind of empty figurehead.

Plenty of other millionaires he could have picked in the UK, USA if that was the game.

He may well be involved with moving money out of China and disguising it that end.

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10 minutes ago, hippo said:

Rumours he could be a permanent member of the board.

If you want to go into conspiracy mode - is he actually the supplier of funds to purchase the club, while presenting Tony Xia as the mega rich squeaky clean front man ? - sounds far far fetched, but thats exactly what happened at Reading. The rich billionaire who supposedly brought the club, just disapeared -   leaving Reading on the verge of bankruptcy.

Not beyond that realms of possibility that the same thing will happen here...

 

No that isnt actually what happened at reading. He suggested a lender to their board, it wasnt a takeover. No similarities to this at all. Also the Sun are classic WUMs. 

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I heard they wanted to set up a launderette business but it just seems far easier to run that money through Villa instead. It'll come out nice and clean on the far end.

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There is a lot of speculation and conspiracy theories about this guy.  I don't know much about him but from what I can see he manages offshore investments to take advantage of low tax and favorable privacy laws.  While I don't like what he does (for another thread), I think it is within the bounds of the law and there are probably hundreds out there like him offering similar services to football clubs and businesses all over the world. In fact the first paragraph in the article suggests a few clubs are doing similar things.  I don't think it is about laundering criminal money at all. But if the Government are contributing, or Xiu wants to keep his business affairs private, I can see what he might want to use someone like Samuelson.  If  Samuelson is involved, I hope it is just to set up the deal, rather than sit on the board.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2012/aug/21/reading-zingarevich-offshore-tax-havens

Reading, tax havens, secrecy and the sale of homely football clubs

Siting the shares of companies, including football clubs, in offshore locations such as Gibraltar or the Cayman Islands (the Glazer family's newly registered base for Manchester United) means owners avoid UK capital gains tax and stamp duty, when they sell the shares at a profit in the future. Such havens also offer to investors a guarantee of secrecy, about who owns or is involved in companies registered in them. John Christensen, a director of Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against the vast draining of money from tax-paying countries such as Britain, says tax havens should more justifiably be known as "secrecy jurisdictions".

The key figure at Reading in enabling the sale by the outgoing owner, Sir John Madejski, to Zingarevich, agreed in January and finally approved by the Football and Premier Leagues in May, was Christopher Samuelson, a veteran manager of funds in offshore locations. Samuelson is a director of Mutual Trust SA, an investment firm based in Switzerland, which also operates a low tax regime and long tradition of secrecy about banking and financial ownership. On its website,, undergoing reconstruction, Mutual Trust carried the assurance: "Our challenge is to provide our clients with their fundamental rights to privacy of their information and to protect their assets from attack and confiscation … We will not use jurisdictions that do not respect and uphold the fundamental right of clients of confidentiality. Your information is safe in our hands, for always.".................

Samuelson was approached to see if he could find a buyer and finally he concluded a deal with echoes of the mooted one for Everton in 2004. Then, Anton Zingarevich, 21 at the time, was involved in talks to take over the club, with the money to come from a fund managed by Samuelson based in Brunei. Boris Zingarevich, an industrialist who his representatives say has built a paper company, Ilim, from scratch over 20 years, rather than becoming a billionaire through favourable state sales of assets, like Russia's oligarchs, said he was not interested in English football. This time Samuelson did deliver a deal to buy Reading, and both Madejski and Samuelson's TSI vehicle have been open about the terms of the deal. TSI bought 51% of the club for £12.7m, and has an option to buy the other 49% for £12.3m. That is £25m to buy a well-run club with a new stadium, now in the Premier League. The deal was one in an increasing tendency for overseas buyers to target clubs in the Championship, where they pay less than for those in the Premier League, and aim to grasp a financial jackpot if they win promotion. Leicester City, bought by the owners of the King Power duty free franchise in Thailand; Cardiff City, owned by Malaysian investors, and Nottingham Forest, bought this summer by the Kuwaiti Al Hasawi family, are in the vanguard of that process. Madejski agreed his sale, at what many believe is a bargain price for the club he rebuilt, with Reading still in the Championship; he completed for the same figure despite Brian McDermott's side triumphantly claiming promotion, although Samuelson has said Madejski was paid a £5m bonus. After sundry mishaps, collapses and scandals, both the Premier League and Football League have developed new rules and procedures before approving new owners, and the Football League led the four-month process at Reading. The requirements for owners and directors of clubs, formerly known as the "fit and proper person test", are that anybody on the board or owning more than 30% of a club must not have unspent criminal convictions for dishonesty, be bankrupt or have been involved in the insolvency of two football clubs since 2004. Both leagues now also require proof that the money is there, as committed, to buy the club, and to see a business plan which shows the club will be able to remain solvent and fulfil its fixtures for the season ahead. Both leagues now employ corporate intelligence companies to gather information, mostly from public sources and press coverage, about prospective owners. The Premier League also makes inquiries of the Home Office and Foreign Office to ask whether the government has relevant information about prospective owners.

Anton Zingarevich, who has repeatedly described owning Reading as "a dream", and pledged to run the club responsibly, has said the funds to pay Madejski came from "family money". Artem Savko, a spokesman for Ilim, Boris Zingarevich's pulp and paper firm, : "Ilim has nothing to do with Reading, nor football," and a source close to Zingarevich said he has nothing to do with the Reading acquisition. Anton is understood to be involved on the construction side of his father's personal businesses, and not to work at Ilim in any capacity. Ultimately the Football League took the view that the millions for Anton to pay Madejski via Samuelson's Gibraltar vehicle could not wholly be separated from his billionaire father. So Boris Zingarevich, while not a director of the club or TSI, was required to certify his suitability under the owners and directors test, which applies to anybody who could be said to exercise "control" over a club. Samuelson, and Andrew Obolensky, a director of TSI, have also been certified.

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So I'm not sure that Samuelson did anything untoward at Reading? I feel like I'm missing something here. He's a fund manager who facilitated a deal, which then went awry and he seems to have taken a lot of shit for it. 

If he's a crook I want to know, I'm just not seeing it at this present moment. 

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2 hours ago, ccfcman said:

I heard they wanted to set up a launderette business but it just seems far easier to run that money through Villa instead. It'll come out nice and clean on the far end.

Aston Villa are not very good at keeping clean sheets.

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1 minute ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

So I'm not sure that Samuelson did anything untoward at Reading? I feel like I'm missing something here. He's a fund manager who facilitated a deal, which then went awry and he seems to have taken a lot of shit for it. 

If he's a crook I want to know, I'm just not seeing it at this present moment. 

This.

There seems to be a few people on here that are adamant he is a crook but i'm yet to see any evidence of that yet.

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Just now, sexbelowsound said:

This.

There seems to be a few people on here that are adamant he is a crook but i'm yet to see any evidence of that yet.

Guilty until proven innocent tends to be the way with these things.

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21 hours ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

To reiterate, if such evidence is out there I really, really want to see it. I'm not trying to defend the bloke, I know very little about him.

Seem to remember you defending Tom Fox to the hilt until pretty close to his departure......

But here you go heres the story of another takeover he was involved. 

 

There you go - facilitated a deal for reading with an owner who then when AWOL

Part of the deal was the Samuelson became a director of Reading

Samuelsons company then received £40k per month from setting up such a deal.

None of what he did is illegal - however what we are all interested in is how well do clubs do that he has been involved in ?  - not very.....

 

 

Edited by hippo
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4 minutes ago, Richard said:

Not sure the relevance of whether DDID was supportive of Tom Fox or not has to do with asking a perfectly legitimate question about who is Samuelson ?

His Judgement of Villa directors \ CEO ' s ?

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10 minutes ago, hippo said:

Seem to remember you defending Tom Fox to the hilt until pretty close to his departure......

But here you go heres the story of another takeover he was involved. 

http://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/chris-samuelson-former-reading-fc-11355076

There you go - facilitated a deal for reading with an owner who then when AWOL

Part of the deal was the Samuelson became a director of Reading

Samuelsons company then received £40k per month from setting up such a deal.

None of what he did is illegal - however what we are all interested in is how well do clubs do that he has been involved in ?  - not very.....

 

 

If as if you say hippo he did nothing illegal I don't see what the problem is?

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5 minutes ago, Richard said:

Not sure the relevance of whether DDID was supportive of Tom Fox or not has to do with asking a perfectly legitimate question about who is Samuelson ?

The answer is simple - DDID is evil

#hippologic

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2 minutes ago, hippo said:

His Judgement of Villa directors \ CEO ' s ?

How can he make a judgement on Samuelson though without knowing the facts,  indeed his posts make clear he is not making a judgement he just wants to know about this bloke.

"To reiterate, if such evidence is out there I really, really want to see it. I'm not trying to defend the bloke, I know very little about him. " sort of makes it clear there is no judgement just a request for information

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Just now, Demitri_C said:

If as if you say hippo he did nothing illegal I don't see what the problem is?

Lerner and Fox have done nothing illegal - that doesn't mean they are Problem free or good for our club. 

 

 

 

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So basically Samuelson appears to have been made the fall guy by Reading fans all because the guy he lined up bailed, something he likely had no hand in. Sounds to me like shooting the messenger almost, the club wouldn't have had financial support without Samuelson's contacts and the second it failed for whatever reason he's the one to blame not the guy doing a runner? Seems like Samuelson has a reputation of being dodgy that may be based solely on petty fan accusation more than anything.

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6 minutes ago, hippo said:

Seem to remember you defending Tom Fox to the hilt until pretty close to his departure......

But here you go heres the story of another takeover he was involved. 

http://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/chris-samuelson-former-reading-fc-11355076

There you go - facilitated a deal for reading with an owner who then when AWOL

Part of the deal was the Samuelson became a director of Reading

Samuelsons company then received £40k per month from setting up such a deal.

None of what he did is illegal - however what we are all interested in is how well do clubs do that he has been involved in ?  - not very.....

 

 

Yes I've seen that. Is that not on the owner who went AWOL rather than Samuelson? That his company were paid to do a job is as irrelevant as your first assertion regarding my opinions on Tom Fox. 

If Samuelson was to be set up as a director, would it not have been in his interest to ensure the deal held?

I don't like the sound of it. At best it seems Samuelson was hoodwinked by a crook. But as for being one? Still innocent. We also don't know what, if any at all, his involvement with this deal has been and what his involvement with the club would be moving forward. 

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1 minute ago, Daweii said:

So basically Samuelson appears to have been made the fall guy by Reading fans all because the guy he lined up bailed, something he likely had no hand in. Sounds to me like shooting the messenger almost, the club wouldn't have had financial support without Samuelson's contacts and the second it failed for whatever reason he's the one to blame not the guy doing a runner? Seems like Samuelson has a reputation of being dodgy that may be based solely on petty fan accusation more than anything.

He's not to blame - but perhaps his choice of prospective owners for football clubs is suspect. If he sets up the deal fine , if we pay him for those services, again fine , personally I don't want a guy like this on our board of directors. 

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