Juninho, EBT’s, Robbie Keane And Side Contracts.
This little collection of fantasies ought to really make you giggle.
Sevco fans like to point out that for a while Celtic dabbled in the business of paying player’s EBT’s.
We did. It’s an acknowledged fact that Juninho got one.
But the truth of that story has been in the public domain for over a decade; we paid him with something like an EBT, with a fixed sum coming on the expiry of his contract. It was our one and only toe dipped in that dark water. Brian Quinn, a former governor of the Bank of England, stepped up to the board shortly thereafter, advised against that and we not only declared it but paid the tax on it before even being sent a letter asking us to.
And there were no side contracts. The details of that payment were in the one we gave to the SFA.
Think we’d have survived that unscathed otherwise? Had the SFA not been in possession of that information we’d have walked the plank at the same time as the LNS commission, or that would have been used as leverage to get us to drop it completely.
They also cling to rumours that Dermot Desmond (he of the previous segment) funded the salaries of various high profile footballers down through the years, like Robbie and Roy Keane, like Thomas Gravesen, like Craig Bellamy.
Forget that this is little different to directors loans keeping on the lights … there is actually no proof whatsoever that it happened.
Even if it did, Celtic’s scrupulous and meticulous business methods certainly would have seen these things declared to all the relevant authorities.
It’s another crazy story going nowhere.
