Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Dig, dig, dig

You have to start worrying about the capacity of a top flight club to organise its finances properly when the club's debts at an Annual General Meeting are given in a currency that went out of circulation more than six years ago. Yeah sure, it is a cheap shot, but at "The round ball in Ankara" we are renowned for not pulling our punches, especially the cheap ones.

Not only that, the report at the AGM starts with: "Well I don't know what the debt is approximately. But I know the figures."

If I was giving a report on the millions of lira in debt my club was in I think I might actually take in a piece of paper which actually had the names and the figures written on it.


 
If Ankaragucu really owe trillions of lira not even an Arab oil sheik could save them.

I had to listen bloody carefully but I think I understood the following.

The figures given below are in real Turkish lira. The fellow, I don't know who he is, Mehmet Ural said that these debts were approximate.

The club owes:
Mustafa Akan (owner of an asphalt company that works with the Ankara Buyuksehir Beledeyesi, a former Ankaragucu director and a current director of Ankaraspor whose honorary chairman is Melih Gokcek) - 10 million

Levent Camur (former General Secretary at Ankaragucu) - 2.45 million

Ender Yurtguven (former general manager of both Ankaraspor and Ankaragucu and now back to Ankaraspor FUN FACT: Ender had a beer and a joke with Oz Kanka many years ago) - 1.7 million

Faruk Kalyoncu (former director at Ankaragucu, FUN FACT: Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a witness at his wedding in 2004. Other people to attend included then TBMM Speaker Arınç, then Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül as well as Abdülkadir Aksu, Kürşad Tüzmen Güldal Akşit, Recep Akdağ, Hüseyin Çelik, Cemil Çiçek, Hilmi Güler, Zeki Ergezen, Sami Güçlü and Osman Pepe. I wasn't invited) - 11 million

(inaudible) - 4.5 million

Gordion Insaat (FUN FACT: Oz Kanka has no idea what this company is) - 4.25 million

It doesn't add up, but our unknown figure Mehmet Ural in the video above said that the debts to members of the former Ankaragucu board under Ahmet Gokcek are owed about 41 million lira.

If you know who this fellow is then please comment below this post.

So, on the surface we have a number of former directors (and other unknown people/companies) of Ankaragucu suing to get their money back after the club was taken away from former Chairman Ahmet Gokcek. An Ankara court had found that the AGM at which he took over was not legal due to voting irregularities.

In many ways, except that the figures are so much bigger now, this is very similar to how directors under Cemil Aydin's honorary reign sued to get their own loans back when the Gokceks took over.

So far so petty. In fact it is sort of understandable. If I became a director of the club I'd want it to succeed and if I had a couple of million to spare I may well lend it to the club in pursuit of glory and a league championship in its centenary year. Then, when the courts take the club away from me and my mates I may well head off to the courts to get my money back.

Except that these guys, or at least some of them, had actually launched their court case against the club more than a year ago.

This is a list of the names of people, and what they claimed at the time, who had sued the club back in January last year December 2010. Remember, most of the names below were still working for the club as directors or employees when they sued and most continued to work with the club right up until Ahmet Gokcek was kicked out.

Nuri Elibol 7.902.574,00 TL

Seçkin Odabaşı 1.483.791,00 TL

Ömer F. Kalyoncu 638.711,00 TL

Yavuz Bulut 631. 254,00 TL

Necdet Kuzu 488.488,00 TL

Nadir Koç 2.598.347,00 TL

Mustafa Akan 9.790.670,00 TL

Mehmet Nükte 2.244.582,00 TL

Levent Çamur 3.059.114,00 TL

Ender Yurtgüven 1.753.628,00 TL

Ayhan Atalay 3.115.574,00 TL

Toplam: 33.706.733,00 TL

Why would you sue the club you are working for? Not just working for but for whom you yourself owe so much?

My theory? Quite simple really. It was a doomsday device. The courts had just decided that the AGM that had elected Ahmet Gokcek as chairman would have to be re-held. So, lets loan Ankaragucu millions, anyone who tries to takeover the club will have to pay us.

None of the names listed above really moved to get their loans back until after the club was taken away from the Gokceks.

And so the debts are there. The doomsday device has exploded. And as reported on the blog before, this is only around half of Ankaragucu's debts.

By the way, none of this explains why the club had money hassles before the court decision. Why was the club bus re-possessed? Why was Darius Vasell kicked out of his hotel?

In the meantime, we still don't have a clue as to the background of the new chairman or his plans to sort out this almighty mess. Hopefully we will learn soon.

With special thanks to Spine for lots of hard spade work on this piece. Any inaccuracies above are solely his fault.

And thanks to www.klasspor.com as well.

7 comments:

  1. is there nothing that we can do to take this to UEFA ? There is something clearly not right with this and the TFA are doing nothing, and neither are the Turkish Government.

    It amazes me that this is allowed to happen, if the courts have ruled Ahmet Gokceks takeover was illegal, then why are Ankaragucu been left with the debt and not the Gokceks?

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  2. There are a couple of points there Bellshill.

    First, I'm not making any allegations of misuse of funds or illegalities of any kind. (not that you suggested I had but I want to make that clear)

    Second, when the Gokceks took over they were the legal custodians of the club. The decision later on which said that they did not win it legally did not mean that all that they did while in control was illegal.

    In regards to the financing weirdness. In a way it isn't too much different to the way the Glazers exploited financing rules to saddle Liverpool with a load of debt. All totally legal, not necessarily moral.

    Should something be done to stop this sort of thing? I would be first to jump on the bandwagon.

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  3. Anonymous8:14 am

    Columns in the Ankara editions of Hurriyet and Sabah this morning do similar things:

    a) shed no light whatsoever on the questions raised above or in previous posts

    b) bemoan the fact that attendance at the congress was tiny and included neither the Ankara governor, nor any former club chairmen, nor any former players, nor anyone of any real weight in the Ankaragucu "community".

    Spine, who aims to be less obsessive about this today

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  4. Amazing what real journalists can do when they become obsessive about something.

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  5. Anonymous11:05 am

    Not relevant to AG's fate but... Glazers saddle debt on ManU. Liverpool "proud custodians" were Hicks & Gillett. Not anymore. They were kicked out from the club in an operation that they labelled as an "epic swindle" :)
    Dan

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  6. Thanks for pointing out the error Dan.

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  7. The cobwebs are gradually being blown away and it makes me ........ speechless ......... and that's offishall !!

    There is always a first time for everything !

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