On Sun, 2007-06-17 at 10:09, Mark Humphries wrote: > > I do find it 'interesting' and have been around long enough to see some > clever/naughty (depending on your moral compass) manipulation. > > However, when any company does their accounts they will manipulate the > figures with the sole purpose of trying to minimise profit and therefore > avoid paying tax. Is that wrong? > > That is all I am saying, if it is not illegal then it is not wrong, in a > business sense.
Mark - I'm not going to do a chapter-and-verse rebuttal of this. Just to make one simple point. The loophole-stretching, sharp-but-legal practice IS the problem. If we'd arrived at this point WITHOUT the "loans" from Astor, WITHOUT Bates having previously stated that the club would not have a debt problem by this summer then nobody would have a peg on which to hang their case. However he DID make that statement, and at no point have the reasons for those loans been divulged, and it's incredibly hard to believe that a company would offer a multi-million pound loan without due diligence and some expectation that the loan would be repaid. But by coincidence and misfortune, it happened. So either the loan was requested and offered with a view to conniving to engineer the administration, or both Bates (viz his statements on the club's debt position) and Astor must have employed the same set of innumerate accountants used by Ridsdale and co and relied on their advice. Obviously the latter must be the case since I wouldn't dream of suggesting the former unless I had a large crate of evidence and a very expensive solicitor. But since that is so hard to believe, that's why many of the failed bidders - and several creditors - are considering a legal challenge. Obviously that might be to the detriment of team-building this summer, but following your earlier reasoning, sauce for goose = sauce for gander, and if Ken's allowed to explore every avenue to extract as much profit as he legally can, so it must be open to any creditor to do the same when faced with the derisory offer that is currently on the table. LUFC have shafted them, so why shouldn't they shaft LUFC to get their half-pound of flesh? Or are you saying that they should take their pain and cancel the kids holidays/sell their house/other emotive indicator of financial pain because it's our football club and we should all pull together> jabba _______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. Leedslist mailing list [email protected] http://list.zetnet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist Join The Leeds United Supporters Trust at www.lufctrust.org
