- Lord Tisdale wrote:
- Hugh Watt wrote:
- Lord Tisdale wrote:
- Homeslice wrote:
- It's probably slowly dawned on Lord Tis and his six toed chums that there's a fair chance we could be having our promotion party at Sid James Park...how sweet would that be.
Perhaps we could then have a reprise of your "we'll never play you again" song, how did that work out for you last time?
We didn't play you for going on 8 years! 
Summat about the word "never" you didn't understand then?
You had eight years of ripping off everybody including the St.John Ambulance and getting your club fecked over, we had eight years of putting our club right.
Way to go Gargs.
Remember the fans and small business creditors are always the innocents in circumstances as these, we rely on our boards to run our clubs as I assume you did.
I don't recall anybody on Argyles board being jailed for fraud, although we would have liked to have strung a few up!
So while your having your bit of fun trying to wind everybody up on ATD, (which is really a waste of time, try PASOTi, you may get a result there) lest you forget your own dalliance with the law, I'm sure you won't object to a timely reminder of it
"The pleas of guilty to fraudulent trading by John Russell and Mike Lewis, who took over Exeter City in May 2002 and left a year later with the club on the brink of ruin, seemed last week to provide appropriate final words on a grimy period.
Russell had a criminal conviction when he arrived at St James Park, having in March 1999 received a 15-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after pleading guilty at Leeds Crown Court to two counts of obtaining services by deception in a £180,000 hire-purchase fraud.
Both men had football form, too. Russell had been the owner and chairman of Scarborough from March 1994 to 2000; he resigned following relegation to the Conference and left the club insolvent, owing creditors £1.25m. Lewis, after a career in clubs' commercial departments, had latterly been at Swansea City, where a brief tenure as managing director ended in what he described as "complete disaster". Swansea's owners handed Lewis the loss-making club, he sold the shares for £1 to Tony Petty, an English ex-pat based in Australia, and the club ended up insolvent with debts of £1.7m. Swansea fans were so incensed that for a time Lewis feared for his safety.
Soon after, Lewis teamed up with Russell to find another club, so they went to Exeter, another club in trouble. The Grecians were losing money, piling up debts; the majority owner and chairman, local jeweller Ivor Doble, was 77 and had loaned the club £483,000. Desperate for a solution, he did a deal to give Russell and Lewis control.
Russell pleaded guilty to a further criminal offence, obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, the charge that when he took over he "Dishonestly obtained for himself . . . membership of the board of directors of Exeter City AFC by deception, namely by falsely representing that he had substantial funds to introduce to the club."
The pair had no substantial funds to invest. Their first major move was to appoint as Russell's co-chairman Uri Geller
There were delays paying the charities and bills went unpaid, including from the company which produced the concert programmes, who instructed bailiffs.
The builders, Mowlem, grew restive about £700,000 owed for two stands opened in 2001. When Russell and Lewis arrived, they said they would take no salaries, but after a while they admitted the club was paying their "accommodation and general expenses".
One of their economies was to stop employing NatWest Bank employees to count the gate money at matches and to dispense with the services of Securicor to take it away.
After that, they would either take the cash away in their cars or leave it in the club's safe over the weekend, then bank it themselves later.
In April 2003, the FA's financial advisory unit produced a report which concluded that the club was failing to meet its debts and should seek advice from an insolvency practitioner.
The FAU strongly recommended that a security firm be employed to bank gate money, and criticised the failure to hold regular board meetings.
The six directors other than Russell and Lewis described the report as "deeply disturbing" and resigned.
Russell and Lewis said they were working "24/7" and would "battle on", but on May 14 2003, with City relegated to the Conference, Devon & Cornwall Police raided St James Park and arrested Russell, his wife Gillian and Lewis.
Their homes were also searched. Last week the police revealed that "a number of complaints" had been made and "it was alleged that Russell and Lewis had committed a number of offences" during their time in charge. Uri Geller told me he was one of the people who reported his concerns to the police.
"I cannot add any more on legal advice," he said, "but it was a very unfortunate situation."
The Grecians, £3.2m in debt by then, came perilously close to collapse. Russell and Lewis's year in control left a trail of creditors grimly familiar at other clubs: local and national businesses, the ambulance service, electricity, water and phone companies.
Almost £450,000 was owed in tax and VAT; £66,066 was owed to the local university. The £13,414.59 outstanding to Devon & Cornwall Police for match duties cannot have generated much sympathy at HQ.
The police investigation continued, hampered, the officer in charge, Detective Mark Sandford, by a lack of "the most basic financial records".
Police had been unable even to determine how much money had gone through.
Finally, Russell and Lewis were charged with four offences and Gillian Russell with two, at the beginning of the trial, Russell and Lewis pleaded guilty to the charge that they were "Knowingly party to the carrying on of the business of Exeter City with intent to defraud its creditors".
Russell pleaded guilty to the further charge of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception.
Other charges, of conspiracy to defraud, were left to lie on the file.
The prosecution accepted not guilty pleas from Gillian Russell to theft and false accounting.
Many people still do not realise how close the club came to folding. Russell and Lewis went shopping for a football club and landed on Exeter. "
So jog on
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Sat Feb 13, 2016 7:59 pm
