Friday, March 7, 2008

Jack Warner's Serbian relatives

The lessons of Jack Warner have gone worldwide. I've been able to break them down as follows:
  1. Take control of a soccer association, either national or, preferably, continental.
  2. ?????
  3. Profit!
Today's A-Plus student is Zvezdan Terzic, the president of the Serbian Football Association. Unfortunately for him, the police in Serbia don't view the outcomes of Mr. Warner's coursework as legal, so Terzic now has a warrant out for his arrest.

Seriously, suits this nice cost money
Terzic is accused of personally profiting off of at least one transfer while director at OFK Belgrade, a position he held from 1997 to 2005. The transfer that the arrest warrant was issued for, is from 1998. This was the transfer of Vanja Grubac to Hamburg SV. Hamburg told Serbian investigators they were obliged to pay Terzic 1.1 million German marks (~$850,000) for the transfer. This is what Harry Redknapp refers to as "Monday".

While Terzic's mess definitely looks bad, it pales in comparison to the scheme launched by Dragan Dzajic, the Serbian NT's general manager. Dzajic and two other officals were arrested last month for skimming approxiamately $9 million dollars off of the transfer of Goran Drulic's $22 Million move to Real Zaragoza from Red Star Belgrade. To do so, they opened a bank account in Drulic's name and forged his signature to withdraw the money. Or, as Harry Redknapp calls it, "every other Wednesday".
Harry explaining where the money came from

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