Kaveh Solhekol on the Premier League investigation into Chelsea for potential financial breaches

Across London, we just mentioned there didn't we, the Premier League investigating Chelsea over potential financial rule breaches. This was during Roman Abramovich's ownership of the club. No charges have been brought so far. The club are not commenting on the story. What exactly are they being investigated for then? You know, when we talk about financial fair play, a lot of people's eyes just glaze over. It's quite boring. Is that how I'm looking? No, no, sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean you, but some of our viewers will be thinking, oh no, FFP again. But to just make it really, really simple and clear, every year clubs have to give the FA, the Premier League and UEFA their accounts to show them exactly how much money they've been spending, how much money they've been bringing in. Now, last summer, around May, the new owners of Chelsea were in the final stages of their takeover and they were doing a lot of due diligence on the club, going through all the books and they noticed a few discrepancies. So what they did is they did everything by the book. They reported what they'd found to UEFA, the Premier League and the FA. Now, we saw about 12 days ago, UEFA announced that they'd basically fined Chelsea for financial rule breaches, 10 million euros. I think that's around £8.6 million. Now, at that stage, we were almost certain that if UEFA were looking into this, Chelsea had self-reported to UEFA, so they would have self-reported to the FA and the Premier League as well. And what we know is that the Premier League are investigating these discrepancies as well. Now, the Premier League are not saying anything. We won't hear anything from the Premier League at all unless Chelsea are actually charged. At that stage, there would be a short statement from the Premier League saying, you know, Chelsea have been charged for X, Y and Z. And as far as Chelsea are concerned, they are not commenting at all. But I think it's important to remember that this is something that Chelsea reported themselves. It is something that the new owners discovered during the takeover process and it's got nothing to do with the new owners. This is something that happened between 2012 and 2019 under the previous ownership and under the previous people who were responsible for the day-to-day running of the club. Who's accountable then? Because what could the consequences be? Because this was under Roman Mavramovic, of course. Well, as far as UEFA are concerned, UEFA have got a statute of limitations, which basically means that they can only investigate and fine you for things that you've done in the past five years. That's as far back as they go. So in Chelsea's case, when they were fined 10 million euros, that was just looking back to 2017, nothing before then. Now, the Premier League don't have a statute of limitations, so they can look all the way back to 2012. Now, what could happen? We're talking hypothetically. If Chelsea are charged, then if they don't accept the charges, the Premier League would set up an independent commission who would look at the charges, they would hear the Premier League side of the story, then they would hear Chelsea's defence, and then it would be up to the commission to decide if Chelsea should be punished. Now, if they were punished, what could the punishment be? Well, it could be something like a fine, it could even be a points deduction, or we may not get to that stage because there may not be any charges, or if there are charges, Chelsea may just hold up their hands and, you know, agree a settlement with the Premier League. But we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. The important thing to bear in mind is that this is something that Chelsea reported themselves, and also that it's got nothing to do with the present owners or the present people running the club. And I'd also have to mention some brilliant reporting, as always, by Martin Ziegler in the Times last night and this morning. And he's actually got some more detail, which we haven't seen. And he believes that these charges are all to do with payments that were made off the book, off the books to agents, and also in one case to a family member of a player who Chelsea signed. And these payments were made secretly, for instance, to offshore bank accounts. So that is what Martin Ziegler believes is behind all this. Very interesting indeed. Yeah, Carvey, thank you very much.