Panorama's Bung Investigation

Mack

Champions League
8 August 2003
Manchester
MCFC
After watching it i thought there would be some hard evidence shown, however what they did show was still pretty damming for teams involved:-

Two agents have claimed they made illegal payments to secure transfer deals with a former candidate for the England football manager's job.

In an undercover BBC Panorama film, agent Teni Yerima says he bribed Bolton manager Sam Allardyce.
Agent Peter Harrison says he paid Mr Allardyce's son to secure deals with Bolton and Craig Allardyce is filmed boasting about access to his father.
Sam Allardyce told the BBC he has never taken or asked for or received a bung. He said he would not condone any breach of FA rules whatever personal affection he has for his son.

Mr Allardyce was named as a possible replacement for the England manager Sven Goran Eriksson before the job was given to Steve McClaren.
Panorama also uncovered that three different Bolton transfer signings involved secret payments from agents to Craig Allardyce, some when he was contractually banned from doing any Bolton deals.
The club has admitted it knew nothing about the manager's son getting a cut of the money in these deals.
In the secret filming Craig Allardyce told the undercover reporter: "I'll get the (player) profile and I'll walk straight into the office and sit down with me Dad. It's easy, it's easy."
Craig Allardyce told the BBC that he had exaggerated his own importance to the undercover reporter in order to attract opportunities.
He denied any wrongdoing in his Bolton deals or relationship with the club.
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The Portsmouth manager, Harry Redknapp, is secretly filmed discussing the possibility of buying the Blackburn captain Andy Todd, illegal under FA rules.
At the meeting, Mr Redknapp tells agent Peter Harrison: "I like Toddy, don't I? No I'd take him. I would take him. I would take him without a doubt."
But Mr Redknapp denies his conversation about Andy Todd with the agent Peter Harrison amounted to "tapping up".
His assistant at Portsmouth at the time of the filming, Kevin Bond, is secretly recorded admitting he would consider discussing receiving payments from a proposed new agency involving Peter Harrison. Bond also says he will discuss it with his then boss Harry Redknapp.
Mr Redknapp told the BBC that he has never taken a bung and had given Kevin Bond no reason to think otherwise.
When Mr Bond was told of the filming he said that he is not interested in receiving bungs and that no one he has ever worked with has taken a bung.

The documentary also shows Chelsea's director of youth football, Frank Arnesen, secretly filmed making a illegal approach or "tapping up" Middlesbrough's England youth star 15-year-old Nathan Porritt.
Last year, Chelsea were fined £500,000 by Premiership bosses, the Premier League, for "tapping up" Ashley Cole from rivals Arsenal.
Chelsea have been warned they would be docked three Premiership points if they were ever caught at it again.
Middlesbrough have confirmed that they did not give permission for the approach.
Chelsea have denied that the filmed meeting broke any industry rules.
In the programme, for the first time a former agent gives an on-camera interview about the corruption he says he has witnessed.
Steven Noel-Hill said: "The game is corrupt. Bungs were the lubricant of deals. I would say that 80% of all deals have bungs attached to them."
Three different licensed agents who are secretly filmed admit it is normal for some Premiership managers to take bungs.
Charles Collymore - named publicly for the first time in the Panorama film by Luton Town manager Mike Newell as the agent who offered him an illegal payment - said to the undercover reporter: "There's managers out there who take bungs all day long.
"I would say to you comfortably there's six to eight managers we could definitely approach and they'd be up for this no problem."
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When Mr Collymore was offered a right to reply to the filming he denied offering or accepting any bungs and says he gave the undercover reporter, UEFA-licensed coach Knut auf dem Berge, false information because he was suspicious of his agenda.
Panorama also reveals that the Bolton chairman Phil Gartside - who is part of the Football Association board which helps police the game - misled his own fans.
He complained in the press last August about an illegal approach to buy his captain Jay Jay Okocha and said he had asked Fifa to investigate.
But Panorama finds out that eight days earlier he had been in a room with the agent Teni Yerima trying to sell Okocha.
Mr Gartside has since told the BBC that he had not wanted to sell Okocha but could not ignore a generous offer for his player.
Agent Peter Harrison has since denied that he is a corrupt agent and says that everything he said to the BBC's undercover reporter, Knut auf dem Berge, was merely pub gossip and banter.
He says his payments to Craig Allardyce were legitimate.
Agent Teni Yerima told the BBC that he made everything up as part of a plan to find out who Knut auf dem Berge was working for.
In March, Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was appointed as head of a probe into alleged transfer bungs in the Premier League. He is looking at irregular payments in transfer deals made since 1 January 2004 and he is expected to publish his findings within weeks.


To see the program:- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/default.stm
 
Credit must go to the BBC advertising team. A load of over hyped mess. No real evidence....agents making money out of football. No kidding!!They need to look into Roman's filthy 'Blood money'.

The only half good evidence was against Allardayce, who every assumes is bent anyway...and a load of padding re tapping up, that every club clearly does. The most disturbing part of the programme was how much Fat Sam's son looks like him.....poor guy.
 
I enjoyed watching it but thought it might of opened up something that no one knew already.

Nothing surprised me in the program at all, that stuff has been going on for years and I wouldn't at all be surprised if there were many bent officials at the FA that look the other way.

Greed is basic human nature and when money is involved people will do almost anything, I give celebrity love island or big brother as examples.

It would be nice to see a huge flushing out of all the shit in football though, lets hope that program starts something.
 
Most of what we seen was dodgy geezers if anything, the agents who lets face it are never looked upon as "creditable" people. Big Sam’s son looked pretty dodge, which did make Sam look a tad suspect also. I don't think that there was that much groundbreaking proof to be honest. I actually started to get bored of it near the end, I wanted to see brown paper bags and the likes but only seen some dodgy conversations.
 
Yeah i thought it was interesting, but very few are gonna be prosecuted.

Harry Redknapp has nothing to worry about, only the agents and Big Sam's son. Even so they are saying that they were making it up etc. No concrete evidence ie money changing hands.
 
its the agents that are dodgy, and would probably sell their own grandma. Alladyce's Lawyers claims they have received letters from the three agents admitting that they lied.

If so, the precious Beeb will be in trouble. Of course, they are digging around 'for the good of the game' and not to get attention, accolades and awards for 'daring investigative journalism' (which means breaking laws and spying on people)
 
Mack said:
The thing with the Middlesbrough kid could cause Chelsea and Liverpool a few problems..

can't see liverpool getting into any trouble unless the bbc have more evidence that wasn't shown, all i saw was the agent touting the kid from 'boro to liverpool's chief scout frank mcparland who replied with something along the lines of "we'll take a look when he's 17" when it'll be perfectly legal to offer him a pro contract and pay compensation to 'boro

i'm not so sure about chelsea, they definately didn't tap him up as it was the agent who approached frank arnesen saying the kid isn't happy and wants to move away, the only thing that could affect them is the fact arnesen talked money with them

all in all i thought the program was a load of bollocks with very little substance apart from agents bragging about who they've done deals with
 
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