It looks like Charlton could be losing one of their Duchatelet feeder clubs come Monday if the Hungarian tax authorities carry out their threats to collect debts owed to them by Újpest FC. The tax arrears have been placed at Roland Duchatelet son's Roderick's door although they were in fact the result of the shadowy dealings of the crook Roland Duchatelet bought the club from, a man by the name of Sándor Tolnai. Tolnai had claimed to have put millions of euros into the club, before he decided to sell up, with Újpest in serious financial difficulty. Duchatelet has since discovered that the money Tolnai claimed to have put into the club didn't appear on the club's books, and that rather than putting money into the club Tolnai had been stealing the club's resources and putting them into his myriad of offshore companies. So it looks as though the Duchatelets have had their fingers very badly burnt.
At today's club meeting Duchatelet threatened to pull out of Újpest if he was expected to pay debts hanging over from the Tolnai era. If he defaults Újpest run the risk of being demoted to the lowest rung of the Hungarian football ladder, which would in their case would be the 4th Division of the Budapest regional league. However, Hungarian football is so corrupt that this is very unlikely to happen. They'd probably only drop one league as Újpest's deadly rivals Ferencváros did a few season's back, also for financial irregularities.
Roderick was close to tears in today's meeting apparently. I wonder if Roland was keeping tabs on things, or indeed Loic Nego for that matter.
Being a member of the happy Duchatelet family may have its risks, if this latest development is anything to go by. Let's just hope that distant rumblings on the banks of the Danube don't have catastrophic consequences down by the Thames Barrier.
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Thanks for posting this - very interesting. Glad to hear that it isn't RD's doing - presumably next in line for the tin-tack is whoever he got to do due diligence in the Ujpest deal.....messy.
"He is very successful and clever," said Slater. "It was clear from the start he was a serious and substantial individual. He did not want to mess around and things moved on apace with good faith on both sides.
"His background in football has meant he was able to conduct the due diligence process himself - he was more prepared than someone else would have been from another field."
southlondon-today.co.uk/Sport.cfm?id=1905&headline=Slater:%20Duchatelet%20will%20make%20Addicks%20stronger
Maybe he cares about the other employees or even the fans.
Well, I've got two words for Roland Duchatelet to have as 1st 2nd and 3rd priority, whenever he's in Central and Eastern Europe.
Due. Diligence.
On everything, right down to his choice of taxi.
My father grew up in the "Magnificent Magyars" era and my cousin played for the then army team, Honved, at a time when football was just that and not a medium to make easy money.
I reckon that Ujpest as a business probably has a revenue about the same size as a medium sized Hungarian advertising agency. I don't think an ad agency is significantly more complicated a business than a football club. Yet, as I know from experience, if one of the big ad agency networks bought a Hungarian agency, the due diligence would take 4-6 months and you can bet your life that possibly hidden tax liabilities would be something they'd be searching for.
RD apparently only met CAFC 4-6 weeks before the deal was announced, and part of that time was Christmas.
But as well as the DD itself, its the wider indication that RD just hasn't had the time to think through his network strategy, or fully absorb the business he's bought, before gobbling up another, which worries me.