This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/02/harry-redknapp-admits-lying-journalist
The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Harry Redknapp admits lying to journalist over payments | Harry Redknapp admits lying to journalist over payments |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| Harry Redknapp has admitted lying to a News of the World journalist about how almost £100,000 came to be paid into his offshore bank account in Monaco. | |
| Giving evidence at his tax evasion trial, Redknapp, 64, said he had told Rob Beasley that $145,000 (£93,100) in his account was a bonus paid to him for the sale of Peter Crouch because he wanted to get the reporter off the phone. | |
| Redknapp and the former Portsmouth owner, Milan Mandaric, are accused of cheating the public revenue over sums totalling £189,000. They deny the payments to the Monaco account were bonuses, arguing that the account was set up purely to provide personal investment opportunities for Redknapp. | |
| When John Black QC, prosecuting, asked Redknapp why he had told Beasley the money was a bonus — and contradicted Mandaric's claim that it was an unrelated investment account — the football manager said he had done so to get rid of the reporter. | |
| "I don't have to tell Mr Beasley the truth," Redknapp said. "I have to tell the police the truth, but not Mr Beasley. He's a News of the World reporter." He said he had decided to lie because he did not want to read a story in the paper on the day Spurs were due to take on Manchester United in the 2009 League Cup final. | |
| "I just want to get Mr Beasley out the way — I just didn't want a story in the paper," he said. "I was going to come down to breakfast and all my players were going to be looking at the back page of the News of the World. It was going to be embarrassing." | |
| During cross-examination on the ninth day of the trial, Redknapp repeatedly insisted that despite what he had told Beasley, the first sum paid into the Monaco account was a personal investment given to him by Mandaric rather than any kind of bonus. Redknapp said that although he felt he was due 10% on the sale of Crouch to Aston Villa in 2002, he had settled on 5% after being told that that was all he was contractually entitled to. | |
| Redknapp denied being a liar, but said that misdirecting Beasley was "the easy way out". Black then accused him of "letting the cat out of the bag" during the phone conversation. | |
| Redknapp replied: "Why would I let the cat out of the bag to the News of the World if I had done anything wrong? | |
| "Do you think me and Mr Mandaric are going to have completely different stories? Are we that stupid?" | |
| When asked again why he had offered a "false story" to Mr Beasley, he added: "I just wanted to get him off my back. This is the easy way out for me before a cup final." | |
| In any case, said Redknapp, he had always considered the payments to be linked to Crouch. "In my mind it was always related to Crouch even though it wasn't connected," he said. "I felt morally I was due that money even though legally I wasn't." | |
| If Mandaric had agreed to the further 5% that Redknapp felt he was owed, he said, he could have arranged it easily enough through the club. Redknapp added, sarcastically: "But no, he decided to go to some exotic plan and that's where we've all ended up today." | |
| Neither he nor Mandaric, he said, were "silly" enough to have embarked on such a course to evade so little money in tax. Mandaric, he added, had presided over "$2bn companies; we're not talking about a skint member". There was "not a chance", said Redknapp, that he and Mandaric would have cooked up such a scheme. | |
| Although he claimed it was a coincidence that he had gone to Monaco to open the investment account just four days after learning that he would not get the full 10%, Redknapp said it was possible that Mandaric had brought up the subject of the much-discussed investment fund at around the same time because he could see Redknapp "had the hump" after the sale of Crouch. "I'd never been to Monaco in my life," Redknapp said. "And I certainly won't be going again." | |
| Redknapp told the court that had it not been for his decision to co-operate with the 2006 Quest inquiry into bungs in English football, the issue of the Monaco account would be dead. Other football managers had not voluntarily declared accounts, he told the jury. | |
| "As I have said many times Mr Black, if I don't go to Quest and tell them about that account, nobody knows," Redknapp said. "Half the managers didn't even tell them. If I didn't tell them it's dead." | |
| The frequently tense exchanges between Redknapp and Black were lightened when Redknapp referred to his affection for his late bulldog Rosie, explaining that he had named his Monaco account after her because "I loved her to bits". He said that he had to add his birth date to the name as there was another Monaco HSBC account called Rosie. | |
| When the prosecutor suggested that someone else might have had a dog by the same name, Redknapp shot back: "Please, Mr Black, it could be someone's wife," adding: "If she was as nice as Rosie they have got a good wife." | |
| Redknapp told Black he was aware that the sums being transferred were large amounts. "I was brought up in the east end of London, Mr Black, in a very poor family. I know it's a lot of money." | |
| Redknapp, of Poole, Dorset, and Mandaric, 73, from Oadby, Leicestershire, deny two counts of cheating the public revenue. | |
| The trial continues |