Exposed: Chelsea shares secrets
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Exposed: Chelsea shares secrets
Sun probe uncovers link between club chiefs and crunch stadium vote
QUESTIONS ... Roman AbramovichTHE SUN today exposes share dealings that raise serious questions for Chelsea FC.
Our shock investigation proves that people connected to owner Roman Abramovich - and leading club officials - bought shares at the exact time the club was trying to steamroller through plans to quit Stamford Bridge against the wishes of some fans.
Blues chairman Bruce Buck insisted he did not know who had bought the shares but SunSport can reveal the names of individuals who, just before a vote crucial to the club's future, paid thousands of pounds for stakes in the company that owns the pitch and stands at the Bridge.
They include:
Abramovich's head of security.
An accountant who is one of the Russian billionaire's most trusted lieutenants — and his wife.
A lawyer who is a partner in the same London office of an American firm of solicitors as Buck.
And an individual whose shares are registered at an address owned by someone called Brandon Buck, who appears to be an employee of Kohn Pedersen Fox, a firm of architects who have worked with Chelsea.
They and others with apparent links to senior figures at Chelsea bought significant numbers of shares in Chelsea Pitch Owners PLC AFTER the club had announced a proposal to buy back Stamford Bridge in order to push forward plans to build a new 60,000-seater stadium.
Furious members of CPO, the organisation set up in 1993 to stop Chelsea being forced out of their home of more than a century, will demand answers at the AGM tomorrow.
Fans became suspicious when large amounts of shares were issued between Chelsea announcing their offer to repurchase the Stamford Bridge freehold and the vote at last October's Extraordinary General Meeting.
In the end, the club failed to secure the 75 per cent of the votes they needed for the buy-back to go ahead.
The CPO board admit they allowed more shares to be sold than permitted. The club say it was an oversight.
Buck said he had encouraged anyone who asked how they could help to vote in favour if they had shares or to buy shares if they did not.
Fans believe the CPO is being taken over by people likely to vote in favour of club plans. CPO founder member Ashley Rolfe said: "I bought the first 10 shares ever issued in Pitch Owners. I watched fans scrimp to buy shares to protect their club. I'm outraged we were used when the club needed us and sidelined when they felt we were an irritation."
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READ THE FULL BOMBSHELL INVESTIGATION HERE
Where does the Buck stop in share riddle?
ON THE UP ... Blues chairman Bruce Buck has increased his CPO share holding from one to 100ALEX FERGUSON allegedly once claimed former Chelsea captain Dennis Wise could start a fight in an empty room.
At tomorrow's meeting of the Chelsea Pitch Owners, where shareholders will be asked to approve Wise's appointment to the board, there will be no need for his talent for creating confrontation.
Because, once again, some of Chelsea's most committed fans will be taking aim at the people who run their club.
They will ask whether the Chelsea hierarchy encouraged the purchase of shares in CPO by people likely to support the club's plans to leave Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea strongly deny trying to manipulate the crucial vote at last year's EGM.
And there would have been nothing illegal in senior Stamford Bridge figures encouraging friendly faces to buy CPO shares in order to vote in support of moves to leave SW6.
But some supporters, who have been following the club since long before Roman Abramovich's revolution began in 2003 and who joined CPO to protect the club from losing its home, believe something fishy is going on.
That their opinions and their votes are being diluted by people loyal to Abramovich and the Chelsea hierarchy.
Why do they think this?
Between October 3, 2011, when Chelsea announced their proposal to buy back the freehold of Stamford Bridge from CPO, and October 20, when sales of shares were suspended a week before the meeting, a number of people with apparent links to the Chelsea hierarchy bought stakes in the company.
SunSport has been unable to find out whether they voted in favour of the club's proposal at the October 27 meeting.
Of course, these people may have bought shares without any prompting from anyone at Chelsea and voted 'Yes' because they genuinely believed it was the best thing for the future of the club.
Or they may have acted in that way out of loyalty to the Chelsea hierarchy. They included:
MARK SKIPP. The former SAS man is Abramovich's head of security and has been involved in protecting the Russian oligarch since soon after his Chelsea takeover.
But despite being connected to Abramovich, and therefore Chelsea, for several years, Skipp did not buy his 65 shares in CPO until October 17.
PAUL HEAGREN. The accountant has been a close associate of Abramovich for more than a decade and is a director of a number of Chelsea and/or Abramovich-related companies, some of which are based at Stamford Bridge.
They include Fordstam, the firm which is the ultimate holding company for Chelsea FC itself.
He did buy a share in CPO in 2010. But on October 14, 2011, he bought 99 more to take his holding to 100. You are allowed to own more but voting rights only go with the first 100.
Heagren's wife, Victoria, snapped up 50 shares on the same day.
PETER COULTON. Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck is a partner in the London office of American legal firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom.
So is a man named Peter J Coulton, an Australia-trained lawyer.
He has not responded to SunSport enquiries. But it is understood he is the same Peter Coulton who bought 100 CPO shares on October 20.
None of the above responded to questions from SunSport.
GROUNDS FOR CONCERN ... fans think something fishy going onAnd there are also questions about others who bought up to 100 shares before the crucial meeting, such as a former director of a Chelsea-related company and a woman who lives in the same building as a senior Chelsea official. But one other purchase is particularly interesting. On October 14 an individual bought 25 shares and registered them to a London address.
Publicly available records do not confirm that person as living there.
But someone who is listed as an inhabitant of the address, and who co-owns the property according to the UK Land Registry, is a man named Brandon Scott Buck.
One of Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck's sons is called Brandon.
It has not been possible to establish whether the Brandon Buck registered at that address is related to Bruce. If so, though, this raises the intriguing possibility that Brandon Buck encouraged the purchaser to buy the 25 shares and register them to his address.
What can be confirmed is that a Brandon Buck works in the London office of an American firm of architects called Kohn Pedersen Fox, who have provided advice to Chelsea in the past.
There was no response from KPF's Brandon Buck, their head office in New York or Chelsea to requests to clarify the situation.
There are a number of other purchasers, whose full identity and motives remain a mystery.
The key issue is why buy the shares and why then?
CPO was set up in 1993, after Stamford Bridge had been saved from property developers.
The Chelsea chairman at the time, Ken Bates, agreed the club would loan CPO £10million to buy the Stamford Bridge freehold in 1997.
The club's proposal to buy it back was based on repaying the £100 cost price of each share — in other words, there was no financial gain to be made from buying them before the vote and then voting to sell them back for the same amount.
To attend the EGM, fans needed to buy just one share for £100 — not up to 100 at a cost of £10,000. Buying a chunk of shares could have had only one purpose. To influence the vote one way or the other.
In the end, the club failed to secure the 75 per cent of votes they needed when the October 27 meeting turned hostile.
Bruce Buck said afterwards: "We don't know who bought the shares. I certainly know that one of the leaders of 'Say No CPO' bought 100 shares during that period because he told me and he wasn't hiding it.
"During the course of the three weeks, there have been people who have come up to us at Chelsea and asked 'What can we do to help?' We said 'Vote in favour if you have shares or want to buy shares'. We've been pretty relaxed about it."
But other CPO shareholders — Buck himself bought 99 shares back in April to take his total to 100 — are less relaxed.
To some eyes, the connections between some of those who bought shares and key figures at Stamford Bridge — and the timing of their purchases — look like more than simply coincidence.
It was revealed that earlier in the year Bruce Buck had become so frustrated with a CPO shareholder and critic called Paul Todd that he had asked another supporter to get Todd 'under control' and ensure he was kept 'on the sidelines'. A Chelsea statement said that the comments, made in voice messages, were just a reflection of Buck's frustration at being unable to get hold of Todd to talk.
Many believe no new shares should have been issued after Chelsea had announced their buy-back proposal.
And it looks bad that the CPO board allowed many more shares to be sold after the announcement than they should.
A total of 1,686 of the 2,517 shares bought between October 3 and the suspension of trading on October 20 should NOT have been issued because of a restriction agreed by CPO directors themselves a year before.
New CPO board chairman Steve Frankham says this was an oversight — rather than a conspiracy — and that lawyers have advised the board the shares do not have to be cancelled.
But at tomorrow's Annual General Meeting, one of the motions is to allow the board to start selling shares again.
Many will now fear this would simply allow more people connected to the Abramovich regime to gain a say in the future of the club.
Chelsea have claimed they have exhausted every possibility of expanding Stamford Bridge to the 55,000 or 60,000 seats they need to compete with their domestic and European rivals.
Buying back the freehold of Stamford Bridge, they say, would just give them a stronger negotiating position if they found a new site.
It is also worth remembering that Stamford Bridge is 12 acres of prime real estate in one of the most expensive areas in the world.There could be plenty of change from selling it, even if a new stadium elsewhere cost £500m to £600m.
Enough change, perhaps, to make a significant dent in the £740m that Abramovich has spent, at the last count, on transforming Chelsea.
On the other hand, cash spent on refurbishing Stamford Bridge would just add to his overall investment in the club.
If the share activity before last October's EGM of Chelsea Pitch Owners Plc was an attempt to manipulate the vote, it was a bad one because Chelsea lost.
Yet the fear among some fans is that they will one day soon be outnumbered by incoming CPO shareholders, who support the club's plans to leave Stamford Bridge.