So, you’re saying that £29million is accounted for? Towards £32 million of costs? Sounds about right doesn’t it?
So where’s the black hole?
That's the club's operating income and outgoings. Let's assume that Donald paid the other £3m of that out of his own pocket and ignore it.
So separate of that, Donald's company (Madrox) has by their own admission loaned £25m from the club to pay the SBC debt that he agreed to personally pay off as part of the deal to buy the club. We know this was paid in August last year as SBC removed their charge over the club for this money. The debt outstanding is now closer to £20m according to Methven, whether that was through Donald drip feeding it back in, Sartori's cash or anything else, we don't know, but I have no reason to doubt that it's around £20m if they say it is. If they were agreeing to pay back £5m a year, I'd not even be posting this right now, but they aren't, hence why I think there should be some schedule in place to pay that back.
Anyway, in addition, Donald agreed to pay Short for his shares. A £5m down payment was made in May of last year, however as this does not appear on the accounts, we don't know how or when this was paid in practice. Let's assume it's legit £5m from SJD holdings for simplicity!
That left £10m. £400k was wiped off by Short for staffing costs, so £9.6m.
Then in September, DOnald said that 2-3m was wiped off by Short to cover the unexpected costs like Alvarez. That left him with (let's say) £6.6m to pay to Short.
In April, SAFC took out a short term loan with Close bros for £11-12m to cover 'various black holes - see below from Charlie Methven's RAWA meeting:
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So the actual black holes were Donald's payments to Short. Here is the direct quote from Donald on that (I've linked to the time but if it doesn't work, the 60 seconds from 1:12:42:
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So as you can see, what we are asking, is if the club paid back Close Bros for the entire sum in July, then whatever was paid to Short from that sum needs to come back to the club at some point. That's just fact isn't it? The agreement was never for the club to pay for that as a gift, it was that the parachute payments should only be used if Donald could not pay, and then Donald would owe the club as per the SBC debt. As I said before, I would assume that will come back in as a loan like the rest of the payments that had been secured against the parachute payments. I will defer any comment on that until the accounts in April.
The metaphorical 'black hole' I refer to is actually just that once money gets paid out via madrox, we have an unaudited layer of accounts that effectively stops us knowing who has been paid what. It's not illegal, or immoral or any of that, so don't think I'm accusing anyone of a crime. It's just uncomfortable because there are personal debts as well as club debts going out via the same vehicle.
When an owner such as Short is ploughing hundreds of millions in, nobody questions those things (although ask GOM if he was happy with SAFC's accounting setup from a transparency p.o.v in previous years, I recall him being frustrated by Short on that). When an owner's company is borrowing tens of millions of pounds from a club in our situation, and then goes on record saying he won't be putting any of that back in the upcoming year (
2:01:57 on the podcast), then I just get worried.
Is it ok to be worried by that arrangement?