Businessman who fell foul of Marshal Tito made a fortune in the US before buying and selling football clubs
Milan Mandaric revealed while giving evidence at Southwark crown court how a rags-to-riches story started with a traumatic upbringing in the former Yugoslavia. "For four years we were in mountains hiding from enemies while my father was taken to a concentration camp," Mandaric told the jury. "When we returned, our village, it was destroyed. It was difficult days, difficult for everyone living in that part of the world."
Mandaric, born in 1938, relocated with his family to Novi Sad in the mid-1940s, and graduated from the city's Mechanical Engineering Facility. He grew his father's mechanical workshop into one of the country's biggest businesses. It was, however, the sort of enterprise frowned upon by Marshal Tito's regime. Mandaric moved to Switzerland, and two years later he was off again, to the US, where he got rich.
With his engineering background, Mandaric started to develop circuit boards for computers at a time when Silicon Valley was about to take off. He formed a company called Lika, which was sold to Tandy in 1980, and the money rolled in. The late Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple, gave him one of his first contracts. "I suppose you could say it was the classic American dream," Mandaric said in court. became interested in running football clubs.
In the states, he became interested in running football clubs; he set up San Jose Earthquakes and was involved in deals to bring George Best, Bobby Moore and Pelé to the country but the North American Soccer League collapsed and Mandaric decided to try his luck in Europe. He bought and sold stakes in Standard Liege, Charleroi and Nice before deciding he wanted to own a British club, picking up Portsmouth for £5m in 1998.
Mandaric earned a reputation for being trigger-happy and by the time Harry Redknapp took over as manager in March 2002, Alan Ball, Tony Pulis, Steve Claridge and Graham Rix had been sacked from the job. He built a close relationship with Redknapp, who had initially arrived at Fratton Park as director of football. They went on holiday together and the families became good friends.
Portsmouth won promotion to the Premier League in 2003 but the tight bond between Mandaric and Redknapp was broken the next year. Redknapp was unhappy with Mandaric's decision to appoint Velimir Zajec as executive director and resigned in November 2004. A little more than two weeks later, he took over at arch-rivals Southampton. "It was a little bit of a bitter divorce," Mandaric told the court.
Twelve months later the pair were reunited when Redknapp returned to Portsmouth as manager. Mandaric moved on in 2006, when he sold the club to Alexandre Gaydamak for a reported £47m. He became owner at Leicester City the following February.
In November 2007 Mandaric was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting concerning his time at Portsmouth, but released without charge. Mandaric spent a little more than three and a half years at the Walker stadium before selling to a Thai consortium in August 2010. He quickly acquired his third English club, Sheffield Wednesday, saving them from the threat of administration.
By that point, though, the threat of a custodial sentence was hanging over him, after HM Revenue & Customs announced at the start of 2010 that Mandaric had been charged with tax evasion. "Totally ridiculous," was Mandaric's response.