Farhad Moshiri told to pull plug on sale of Everton to 777 amid takeover ‘farce’
Farhad Moshiri has been told by minority Everton shareholders to abandon his takeover “farce” with 777 Partners as the Miami firm descends into legal turmoil.
In a ferocious attack, Everton Shareholders’ Association says “powers-that-be are being disrespectful” and must pull the plug on the proposed deal.
The representative body also turned on the Premier League for failing to conclude its owners and directors checks after eight months of checks. “We have observed with concern and frustration as it became increasingly clear that a fit-for-purpose process cannot possibly take this long as the Premier League continues to demonstrate their inability to regulate,” the group adds.
Fewer than five per cent of the club is owned independently of Moshiri’s Blue Heaven Holdings and the estate of the late Bill Kenwright. However, the association, founded in 1938, still carries some club influence as a “watchdog”, with fan supervision of transactions and sales of shares.
“We are the oldest Shareholders’ Association in the world and are dismayed by the lack of respect being shown to our football club by the largest shareholder Farhad Moshiri, and the Premier League during what seems a never-ending change of ownership process,” the group said, breaking its silence on a deal first agreed last September.
“In the absence of the Premier League making a timely decision we insist that the Everton board, and Farhad Moshiri in particular, stop this damaging process now and recognise that 777 Partners are not at this time fit-and-proper prospective owners of Everton Football Club.”
Sources close to the club said there had been no immediate change of mind from Moshiri around the proposed takeover. Frustration is mounting internally, however, the situation still remains unresolved after a fraught fortnight of legal complaints faced by 777. On Monday former owners at 777’s Belgian club Standard de Liège demanded the seizure of millions of pounds of assets in the country. Two new claims were tabled just days after one of the investment firm’s airlines collapsed and another major lawsuit was launched in New York.
For Moshiri and Everton, severing ties with 777 would not be straight-forward. A clean divorce would be impossible as the investment firm has been paying off other club debts already totalling more than £100 million. The association, however, said: “The powers-that-be are being disrespectful to our fellow shareholders, our fantastic worldwide fan base and football as a whole by continuing to allow this farce to continue. We demand a decision, and we demand it now.”
The association went public with its concern after sources confirmed Standard’s former owner Bruno Venanzi and Immobilière du Standard, the company which owned the club’s famous Stade de Sclessin, were the latest claimants to join a clutch of legal cases against 777. The cases first came to light in a report on the Josimar website, but have been independently verified by Telegraph Sport. A spokesman for 777 Partners declined to comment.
London asset manager Leadenhall Capital is also seeking damages after accusing 777 and co-founder Josh Wander of pledging more than $350 million in assets that “either did not exist, were not actually owned by Wander’s entities, or had already been pledged to another lender”. Within an 82-page New York claim, Leadenhall say “777 Partners and its affiliates have been named in no less than 16 lawsuits generally concerning unpaid debts and collectively demanding more than $130 million”. Many of the cases referenced were filed in recent months.
When asked about the 16 cases, a spokesman for 777 declined to comment again on Sunday but the company has previously told Telegraph Sport that some cases against the group had been resolved.
Last week, 777 Partners made a last-minute payment of around £16 million towards working capital at the Premier League club, to ease alarm shortly after one of its airlines Bonza abruptly ceased flying.
