Forest owner Marinakis faces legal challenge after dodgy transfer admission

Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis has talked his way into legal trouble after admitting that he sold Andre Luiz from Rio Ave to Olympiacos on the cheap.

The Greek shipping magnate has built a small footballing empire that includes controlling stakes in Premier League side Nottingham Forest, Greek giants Olympiacos, and top-flight Portuguese club Rio Ave.

Former Arsenal director Edu is in charge of the sporting operations of this multi-club network, but it is ultimately still Marinakis who calls the shots. He is the man responsible for Forest having had a Premier League record four permanent head coaches this term.

The eccentric owner has had his fair share of controversies, including on the transfer front. For example, Marinakis has done a lot of business with the clubs of beleaguered American businessman John Textor, Lyon and Botafogo.

Last year, Textor openly admitted that the two “adjust” transfer fees for each other in order to get mutually beneficial agreements and to strengthen their relationship. This comment raised eyebrows, given that transfer fees need to represent fair market value, which is, admittedly, a nebulous concept.

Marinakis makes transfer admission

Marinakis, for his part, appears to have now also talked his way into trouble. Speaking to the Greek press, he recently admitted that Wolves and Benfica had offered as much as €20 million for Rio Ave winger Andre Luiz in January.

However, instead of selling to the highest bidder, Marinakis opted to move the 23-year-old to Olympiacos, doing so for just €6.75m because he “wanted to strengthen” the Greek outfit. When this news reached Luiz’s former club Estrela da Amadora, it sparked outrage.

That is because the Portuguese minnows had a 10% sell-on clause in the Brazilian’s deal at Rio Ave, which means that they have missed out on a hefty chunk of money due to Marinakis’ dodgy dealings.

As a result, Estrela have announced that they will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and other relevant authorities to investigate the matter and whether it infringed on “economic fairness.”

Multi-club ownership has become common practice in football, but the regulations of governing bodies UEFA and FIFA do not yet seem to be fleshed out enough to prevent the exploitation of potential loopholes.

As a result, multi-club ownership has increasingly come in for criticism. A prominent example of this is the relationship between Chelsea and Strasbourg.

BlueCo’s ownership of the Ligue 1 club has been repeatedly attacked by Strasbourg supporters because their club has been reduced to the status of a feeder team for the Premier League giants.

This latest incident will do little to alleviate concerns over multi-club ownership.

Estrela’s statement

The full statement released by Estrela da Amadora’s Board of Directors reads as follows:

“In the unwavering defence of the superior interests of Clube de Futebol Estrela da Amadora and its members, the Board of Directors issues this statement following the public declarations of the president of the group that owns Rio Ave FC and Olympiacos FC, in which he stated that there had been significantly higher offers for the transfer of players Andre Luiz and Clayton, which were not finalized, a fact that had already been highlighted by Estrela da Amadora in its previous statement.

“The public confirmation of these facts by the person involved himself presents us with a situation that raises serious and legitimate concerns.

“Estrela da Amadora holds 10% of any future transfer fee for the player Andre Luiz. If it turns out that there were offers of substantially higher value than those that were actually made, this circumstance objectively translates into a direct decrease in the revenue to which our Club would have been entitled.

“Furthermore, the option of selling sporting assets for amounts lower than admittedly higher offers inevitably raises questions regarding the full safeguarding of the economic interests of Rio Ave FC itself and its contractual partners.

“This is not conjecture. These are figures made public by the top executive of the group in question.

“Estrela da Amadora acknowledges that the phenomenon of timeshare ownership is now a reality in global football. However, this reality cannot, under any circumstances, compromise transparency, economic fairness, the protection of contractually involved third parties, or the credibility of national competitions. Portuguese football cannot risk seeing historic clubs transformed into mere instruments serving external strategies.

“Furthermore, any material discrepancy between publicly assumed market values ​​and values ​​actually practised can produce broader economic impacts, including indirect effects on the tax sphere inherent in operations of this nature, a matter which, as is evident, falls to the competent authorities to assess.

“Given this context, Estrela da Amadora will:

• Reiterate its demand for full access to the documentation of the operation;

• Appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to safeguard its rights;

• Reserve the right to report to the competent authorities all public facts that, by their nature, justify further investigation.

“Estrela da Amadora will continue to act with firmness, responsibility and absolute respect for the institutions, but will not fail to fully defend its rights or demand the transparency that Portuguese football deserves.”

Football transfer news headlines today

Neymar makes shock retirement announcement

Julian Alvarez’s next club revealed: €120m Atletico Madrid ace makes transfer call

Chelsea broke Barcelona’s transfer policy – here’s how it’s been fixed

Arteta ‘may not be at Arsenal’ next season with another Premier League title collapse

The FootballTransfers app

Check out FootballTransfers’ new app for all of football’s big storylines, transfer rumours and exclusive news in one convenient place directly on your mobile device.

The FootballTransfers app is available in the Apple App Store. Download here:

•App Store