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The Sheffield Wednesday owner says the police had an agenda to get into corruption in football but this case wasn't anything near to that
The morning after his 13 days before in the glass-walled dock at Southwark crown court, Milan Mandaric, 73 and free, is dapper in blue suit and tie, determined to have his say, while not succumbing to bitterness. During a long interview in a Soho hotel whose plushness seems surreal after the institutional dowdiness of the court where his and Harry Redknapp's fates were decided, Mandaric tries to keep his resolution, not to criticise the City of London Police or Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, who conducted the investigations into him.
"I would be lying if I said it isn't hurting me," he says at his sense of injustice. "Many times, I asked myself why. And I always knew the day would come when I would be found not guilty."
When that moment arrived, the judge telling him and Redknapp to stand up, to hear the replies of the young woman, foreman of the jury, Mandaric said: "I felt I lost my heart beating, all of a sudden." He recalls he put his hand on Redknapp's back, and said: "Don't worry, Harry, it will be fine." Then when the foreman quietly answered "not guilty" to two counts, each: "I just felt: it's the right thing. It did not surprise me."
Mandaric, the current Sheffield Wednesday owner, has suffered stress, high blood pressure and sleepless nights in the four years of investigation and trial, waking up at 2.30am with the cases churning in his mind, then, often, calling his barrister, Lord Macdonald QC. "He always said to me: 'You have been caught in the crossfire.' But he always told me not to worry, there would never be a guilty verdict."
Having, now famously, shaken hands after the not guilty verdicts with DI Dave Manley, head of the City of London Police's "Operation Apprentice,", Mandaric tries to emphasise his respect for the police, to rise above bitterness, but pushed a little, he says: "Their agenda was to get into corruption in football and this wasn't anything near to that."
After high-profile arrests, Operation Apprentice ended up with offshore payments: one, from the agent Willie McKay to Amdy Faye, one from Portsmouth to Eyal Berkovic. They were the subjects of the first trial after which he and Portsmouth's former chief executive, Peter Storrie, were acquitted on 20 October. Then there was the $295,000 (£189,000) to Redknapp's tragi-comically named Rosie 47 account, which HMRC sought and failed to prove constituted criminal tax evasion.
Asked if he thought the police and HMRC were desperate, he replies: "You would have to think they were. They spent a lot of time on the situation; they probably believed there was something there."
He admits he was angry with Redknapp for giving the answer to the News of the World reporter Rob Beasley which landed them in trouble, that the first $145,000 payment was a bonus after Portsmouth's 2002 sale of Peter Crouch, rather than money for investment Mandaric was setting up for his friend:
"I was angry with Harry, I said it was so simple for you to tell the truth. But he always said he gave the answer to get rid of the reporter, then he stuck to it. I wasn't very happy, but we are close now."
As he talks, it becomes clear Mandaric's "hurt, emotional damage," the drain on what he has called his "enthusiasm tank" for football, have a quite specific focus. He believes he has been treated with a lack of respect in this country which he, a very successful businessman in California's Silicon Valley, adopted, and where he has saved three football clubs, Portsmouth, Leicester City and now Wednesday, from penury. He relates again, as he did in court, the fortunes he made in manufacturing circuit boards after arriving in America penniless from his native Yugoslavia in the late 1960s. He estimates that Portsmouth, Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday have paid around £100m in PAYE and national insurance for HMRC, principally from footballers' oversized wage bills. When, in December 2010, he bought financially sunken Sheffield Wednesday, his family told him he was mad. They said: "This country does not want you."
He paid Wednesday's £1.7m bill to HMRC, even while he was being prosecuted for evading much smaller amounts of tax. So Mandaric feels his character and achievements have not been recognised here: "I feel if they had done more due diligence and investigated my personality, what I have done in my life, they never would have proceeded. I didn't come here to take anything; I came to be part of football. "My reward was not there; it didn't matter what I bought to the country," he says, staring ahead, again. "I am disappointed."
Mandaric reflects that he does not know how long the "emotional damages" will take to repair, saying he desperately wants Wednesday to win promotion, because after his £20m has been invested, they can be financially viable in the Championship, then in the summer he will probably want a break. Putting his coat on, he does enthuse, suddenly, about what a great club Wednesday are, how good the fans are, wondering that they have sold 37,000 tickets for this month's derby against United, in League One.
And he finds himself smiling, properly, for the first time, thinking of the game.