The Pitch: Five years after football’s ‘Ground Zero’, FAI probe goes dark
Sam Former Fai Ceo Barnes/sportsfile Delaney John Picture:
The corporate agency which opened a criminal investigation into the Football Association of Ireland - after the discovery of €55m in debts, and suspected company law and money laundering offences - has still not sought or interviewed key witnesses to the scandal, half a decade later.
Throughout its inquiry, the Corporate Enforcement Authority has been focused on emails and files belonging to former CEO John Delaney, rather than widening the scope of its inquiry to include witness statements by those closest to the then administration.
There is mounting speculation that the investigation is struggling to build a solid case, leading this week to a full shutdown of communications on the matter, representing a turnaround on its previous strategy of accountability.
Five months ago the CEA provided a lengthy submission to The Pitch, but stopped short of saying when the case would progress, declaring that “the setting of time limits for the completion of criminal investigations would not be appropriate”.
It outlined reasons for the delays as it sought emails and other files, pointing to lengthy court disputes over access and privilege to documentation belonging to Delaney and the FAI.
One month later, in June - in its first ever annual report - the CEA went into greater detail as to why its investigation had been stalled, pointing to the almost four years of legal battles when it was prevented from accessing those files.
That statement, included in commentary from chief executive Ian Drennan, came a full five months after the Supreme Court upheld an earlier High Court ruling that the emails were not privileged and could indeed be interrogated by investigators.
Almost a year on, why then is there still nothing from the CEA amounting to a case against the FAI?
Among the possibilities are that the CEA is preparing a file against the FAI for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Another is that it is stuck and cannot find any evidence in those emails which would hold up in the DPP’s office. Or it may need even more time and more resources to continue its probe, which is entering a sixth year of investigation.
What is baffling is that the agency has avoided interviewing key personnel who were part of Delaney’s inner executive circle in the years leading up to the collapse, both those who supported him and internal critics of the regime.
Among a number of key questions we asked the CEA this week – along with an update on the status of the probe – was why a number of witnesses (including one we named) within the Delaney administration have still not been spoken to.
There is the possibility that this specific person is working with the CEA to build a case, but this we don’t know.
The Pitch also asked if the investigation was solely focused on emails rather than a forensic financial investigation, and we asked about alleged concealment of evidence from auditors and the use of company credit cards to pay off service providers as debts piled up.
A spokeswoman for the authority responded: “Due to its statutory obligation of confidentiality, the CEA cannot comment.”
When we pointed back to its open communications policy in May and June, the agency did not respond, indeed going against its own stated media strategy “with a view to establishing the CEA’s presence in the minds of its key stakeholder groups”.
Currently stakeholder groups – including the Irish public who will have bankrolled the association by 2028 by almost €100m - are still in the dark, five years after current FAI President Paul Cooke revealed the true extent of the FAI’s debt in December 2019.
Indeed it is so long since the investigation opened that even the name of the agency has changed from the Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement to the Corporate Enforcement Authority.
Whatever the name, the focus must turn to the investigation itself as the case meanders into another year and where one key question must be asked: “Was this a case too big for the CEA, and if so, is it fit for purpose?”
We will also need to know more about the emails that the CEA fought so hard to win access to - through High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court – and what they revealed or what the agency believed they contained.
There was perhaps a hint from the CEA last summer that it was coming under pressure, given its comments to The Pitch and subsequently in its annual report which outlined in great detail the legal process to gain access to John Delaney’s emails.
In his annual statement, CEO Ian Drennan referenced ‘Case Study 13 - Football Association of Ireland (FAI)/Mr John Delaney’ as the authority outlined the legal process from 2020 to 2024.
It said that in June 2020 an email folder which contained 675,240 files was examined, with “removal of duplicate and immaterial items, the remaining dataset was reduced in size to 285,028 files”.
A process involving “multiple court hearings to effect further reduction of the dataset” was run in conjunction with “a similar review conducted by the FAI’s legal representatives” reducing the total number of records to “3,818 – 1,013 relating to the FAI and 2,805 to Mr Delaney”.
It explains that during this process “investigators did not have access to the records in question” until January of this year, when “the Supreme Court issued its determination declining to grant leave (and) brought to finality a process that lasted for approximately four years”.
With Delaney’s “assertions of privilege of over almost 3,000 records unsubstantiated”, it allowed a “CEA investigation in which the matters being investigated included suspected company law and money laundering offences”.
As a result, an application was made to the “District Court to have bank accounts that held hundred of thousand Euro restrained so that the investigation could continue without the risk of the funds in question being dissipated”.
The CEA advises that while it is empowered to initiate summary prosecutions in its own name, where there is a suggestion that “more serious breaches of company law have occurred are submitted to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions”.
Such details just a few months ago from a body which is no longer discussing the matter adds a layer of intrigue to a saga that has gone on far too long and is continuing to cost taxpayers an approximately €7m per year in payments to the FAI.
By 2028 and excluding Covid payments of €33m, the Irish public will have bailed out the FAI through €58m in funding, for a €55m debt, to which nobody has yet been held to account for.
Basketball Ireland and its 250 clubs across the country have embarked on a campaign to expand the sport.
The ‘Club and Community’ partnership in conjunction with AIG, features the voice of legendary basketball commentator Timmy McCarthy – who the federation describes as “a natural fit” for the project.
Basketball Ireland CEO, John Feehan, hailed sponsor AIG’s involvement which “will be there to engage and help our clubs throughout Ireland”.
“We’ll see a number of exciting community engagement initiatives rolled out in the coming months in tandem with AIG, as we work side-by-side to get more people involved in basketball at all levels,” said Feehan.
The extraordinary life of the legendary Celtic and Albania star Rudy Vata will be told tonight to a live audience.
A free event is being held at the Academy Plaza Hotel in Dublin, where co-author Gerry McDade will interview Vata to mark the launch of a book chronicling a remarkable life story.
Football, Freedom and Paradise tells of Vata’s origins in Albania in 1969 to playing France in Paris in 1991, where he marked Eric Cantona, before fleeing the team hotel later that evening and declaring asylum in Paris.
He arrived at a Parisian police station wearing his Albanian team tracksuit, with only his football boots and Cantona’s jersey as his worldly possessions.
A glorious career with Celtic and a return to the national side following the liberation of Albania from communist regime add to an extraordinary story.
Tonight’s event begins at 7pm, but it is important to register on Eventbrite as spaces are limited.