I will specifically answer these questions then with a non-trust hat on. Anyone who knows of my posting history on this site will remember that I did this sort of thing (digging and trying to make sense of stuff) during the Cardoza era too, long before I became involved with the Trust!
Chinese deal...what problems do I have with it? It just seemed strange right from the offset...an unknown company appearing, no history, seemingly no resources, suddenly being able to invest millions of pounds in a struggling fourth tier English Football Club..... it just felt wrong right from the start.
Anything illegal taken place? I don't know as I'm no legal expert. However, when you look through the filings of Northampton Town Ventures, Northampton Town Football Club, and Fantastical Limited (all UK registered companies) you can't find any record of any income at all. So if the Chinese paid money to any of these, why does it not appear in any of the filed accounts for these companies around the times of the transactions.
I would have thought that there should have been some record of something...??
Northampton Town Ventures filed a confirmation statement which was made on 4th November 2017 which listed no updates.....yet the two Chinese had been appointed as Directors of Ventures some three months earlier.
When Northampton Town Ventures was set up in 2015 the directors were David Bower and Kelvin Thomas, however the ONE share in Ventures was owned by a different company, namely Fantastical Limited. Therefore Fantastical "owned" Ventures. Fantastical had two directors, Bower and Thomas.
Fantastical though has filed accounts as a dormant company every year since inception. How can this be, when the Company they owned (NT Ventures) was sold in 2017? It wasn't until 10th August 2021 that Fantastical ceased to be "a person with significant control" in Ventures.
Am I unhappy that the owners made such a large profit from a private transaction? Well yes because I hate all the structure of the club, parent company, ultimate parent company etc....why the need for it if there are common directors for all? I'm more unhappy though that when talking the figures involved it now appears that the Football Club is in debt to the owners for a similar amount to the money they made from said private transaction, and that the proceeds of any land deal will go to pay that debt back to the owners. As Kelvin himself said, if this all went pop now, they wouldn't be too financially impacted.
It will take a more knowledgeable financial brain than mine to actually make out what has happened here.
A very interesting post GPC.
I'm beginning to understand the doubt now.
Thankyou for the explanation.
