The Truth behind Corinthians Millions
Corinthian's have spent over $50 million attracting some of South America's best players to Brazil. But where did all this money come from and how can they possibly hope to make a profit on their investment? Samba Foot investigates truth from rumour in the Corinthian's story.
So, good as their word MSI have created their South American ‘Galaticos’. Only Kleberson (set to sign in summer) and Vagner Love slipped away. So the question, regardless of whom is financing these purchases, is what do MSI possibly hope to achieve with Corinthians? In Joorabchian’s words “We are not unrealistic — no matter how big a club you are, ultimately every player in the world will want to move on, but we want to turn this club into a force in international football.”
The 10-year deal between MSI and Corinthians stipulates that the company will provide $35m cash, of which about $20m will pay off debts, in return for 51% of future profits while covering any losses. The transfer of Tévez is extra, considered a "gift" by Joorabchian to the club. Even Joorabchian with his lack of footballing knowledge must have realised that most European teams barely make a profit, let alone a South American club.
The most obvious answer to the Brazilian (tabloid) press anyway, was they must be money laundering, whether from arms dealers or organised criminals located in ex-Soviet republics. This conspiracy theory is primarily based on Boris Berezovsky involvement, his shady past and known involvements with Joorbachian. Would this make sense? Why launder money through a football team?
Well at first glace this would seem like an obscene suggestion, but then think about it. Buy the best players from South American (where bureaucracy can easily be brown enveloped away) sit on them for a season or two then sell them on to Europe. Suddenly your money is clean and you’re ready to take the profits and run.
The costs of laundering such huge amounts of money are massive. Money laundering is surprisingly complicated in this day and age. If you have $20 million of dirty money and want to put it in your bank account, then prepare to be asked questions. So the criminals pay people to clean up the money and make it appear legitimate. This is a very expensive and complicated business. So if you did it with football players buying a player for $10 million (with dirty money) and selling them for only $5 million – to a European team for example - would be considered a good return.
However I personally would seriously doubt large scale money laundering is behind the MSI move, but it is possible some seriously wealthy people are trying to move the location of their assets. This is believed to be one of Abramovich’s reasons for buying Chelsea, to move his finances out of reach of Russia and all its problems.
In January, the Brazilian government told Joorbachian that he didn’t actually have the necessary paper work to do business in Brazil. MSI quickly reacted by putting Corinthians vice president Paulo Angioni on their board giving him the title ‘Director of MSI Brazil’.
Given the allegations flying around, Brazil’s anti–organised crime task force summoned a confused Angioni to answer the allegations and to prove once and for all where the money was coming from. In a bizarre 4 hour testimony Angioni disclosed little in the way of information. “He didn’t help in any way, shape or form” said District Attorney Jose Carneiro. “He displayed a complete ignorance of both his precise role in the company and the workings of an investments fund”. “There are certain indications of money-laundering, but also a lot is still to be investigated…I can’t give a deadline for closing this case”.
Carneiro therefore appeared to confirm the rumours on Brazilian television and in the broadsheets that he is a front man for Kia Joorabchian with no real control of MSI. Indeed the District Attorney questioned if he (Angioni) even knew where the money is coming from.
Now this whole story may sound a little familiar to our English readers. Chelsea was involved in a very similar ownership situation in the pre-Roman Abramovich era. The then chairman Ken Bates was a ‘front man’ for an unknown group of (Middle-Eastern?) business men who didn’t want their names revealed.
So where does all this leave Corinthians? Well, their future is in the balance. As I write this article Corinthian's have announced Daniel Passarella as Coach - His salary, $100,000 a month. Any one investing such large sums of money will eventually expect a return on it. Failure will simply not be an option. We don’t really know just how big MSI’s financial might really is, should the team not perform this year can we expect another round of big spending? Will MSI pull out and take their players with them to Europe? Who is really driving the club? Why aren’t they buying any Brazilian players based in Brazil? One thing is for certain this year the Brazilian National championship just got a whole lot more interesting. 
