US Edition
On the day that Great Britain’s Rio Olympic heroes returned home to universal acclaim, an altogether different side of sport was playing out in a conference room at Oakwell, the home of Barnsley Football Club.
Patrick Cryne, the owner of the 129-year-old club, had agreed to meet a representative of a Far East company looking to invest in football, together with the club’s manager, Paul Heckingbottom, and assistant manager, Tommy Wright.
As pleasantries were exchanged, Mr Cryne and the two coaches introduced themselves to a female representative of the Far East firm, as well as Dax Price and Francesco Marroccu, consultants to the firm, and Mr Marroccu’s “translator”, Joseph.
But all was not how it seemed. Unbeknown to Mr Cryne or Mr Heckingbottom, Tommy Wright had held three previous meetings with the Far East firm, during which he had accepted a £5,000 cash bribe in return for his help in persuading Barnsley to sign players part-owned by the firm.
As football agent Mr Price described it, Mr Wright was “his man” and “the geezer we’re bunging money to put players in”.
Mr Wright also knew that translator “Joseph” was in reality the former match-fixer Pino Pagliara, now operating as an unregistered football agent in partnership with registered agent Mr Price. Mr Pagliara had hidden his true identity because he knew that if Mr Cryne looked him up on the internet, he would find out about his shady past and any chance of a deal would be off.
What none of them knew during the meeting on August 23 was that they were all being secretly filmed as part of a Daily Telegraph investigation, and that the Far East firm was a fiction whose representative was an undercover Telegraph reporter.
Mr Cryne was wary of the Far East firm from the outset. As its representatives set out proposals for putting up cash to help the club buy players it could not otherwise afford, in return for a share of any future transfer fee, he rightly expressed concerns that such an arrangement would breach FA and Fifa rules on third party ownership of players.
Mr Wright also seemed worried. “It’s very risky,” he said. “Is that breaking rules?” He had been rather less concerned about the rules – including bribery laws – during meetings with Mr Price, Mr Pagliara and undercover reporters earlier the same month.
The 50-year-old Scot, who played for Leeds United and Leicester City, had first sat down with Mr Price and Mr Pagliara on August 8 at the Leopold Hotel in Sheffield, where it was made clear to the Far East company that Mr Wright would require a cash payment for his services.
Mr Price, who has known Mr Wright for a number of years, told an undercover reporter: “Right, listen, we’ve got to give him some readies to get him started. Can we give the cash?”
After the reporter agreed to “sort it out” Mr Wright replied: “You know where I live. Well, you don’t know where I live.” In return for the money, Mr Wright agreed that he would help persuade Barnsley players to hire the Far East firm as their agents, as well as recommending that Barnsley sign other players represented by the consortium.
He would also keep a lookout for players at other clubs that the Far East firm could approach. He said: “What I can do, is that I can just recommend players to you that I’ve gone and seen, and you will have to do your spicy dealing, whatever you do.”
Mr Price told him: “Listen Tommy, we need you to give us players from the clubs that you think we can get yeah? That don’t bring you into the firing line. As Pino says, the third party ownership.” Mr Pagliara asked about the Aberdeen striker Joe Nuttall, in whom he was interested.
He also suggested that the Far East firm should consider representing Alfie Mawson, a Barnsley defender (who later signed for Swansea City). “I’m telling you the biggest certainty is Mawson,” he said. “But you understand I cannot have anything to do with it.”
Mr Price suggested giving Mawson £100,000 to ditch his current agent and sign up with the Far East firm, saying: “I know that if I move Alfie Mawson to Newcastle I can go and get three or four hundred out of that, so if it costs a hundred grand to get another 300 grand on top, it’s worth doing.”
Mr Wright: “And then you’ve got them.”
Mr Price: “Correct, yeah. We’ll have hold over him, because we’ve given him a hundred grand and he will feel that he won’t ever be able to leave us because we’ve given him a hundred grand.”
Mr Wright: “Yeah yeah.”
Mr Price: “You might get two million out of him, three million out of him in his career, do you understand what I mean?”
Mr Price asked: “Is there any players in that team you think we should get, any other players apart from Mawson?”
Mr Wright replied: “[Conor] Hourihane… top champ. He guarantees you double figures in goals”. “Do you know who his agent is?” asked Mr Price, later adding: “We wanna start things rolling as quickly as we can. And obviously I’ll try that Conor kid, what’s his last name?”
Mr Wright replied: “I’ll text you the names. I’ll text you all the names.”
Three days later, on August 11, Mr Wright had another meeting with Mr Price, Mr Pagliara and a reporter posing as an employee of the Far East firm.
At the meeting, which took place in the Queen’s Hotel, Leeds, the party sat around a table where they were joined by Mr Wright.
After Mr Pagliara made a gesture to the undercover reporter, the reporter produced a white padded envelope containing £5,000 in £20 notes, saying: “Thank you for your help.”
Mr Wright responded: “Cheers, just put it there,” pointing at the seat next to him. Mr Wright then went into detailed discussions with Mr Price and Mr Pagliara about deals for third party ownership of players. The three men talked about how they could persuade Barnsley’s owner, Patrick Cryne, to enter into a third party agreement for a player who would be too expensive for the club to buy.
Mr Wright said: “How do you want this done?… I could say [to Mr Cryne] let me speak to the agent again who came on to me and I’ll get him to lend you… if I spoke to him tonight... and he comes back and says 'how can we afford him?’ 'I don’t know, Patrick – this agent says this guy thinks this can work, can I give him your number? Do you want to speak to him?’ and that can be the contact… “I think if you get in front of him – he’s reasonable, he’s not stupid, and he’d know it would be good for him.”
After the meeting, Mr Pagliara anxiously asked the undercover reporter: “What was in the bag, five or 10?” He was assured that Mr Price had explained to Mr Wright that he would be paid £5,000 now and £5,000 shortly afterwards (though the second payment was never made).
The day before the meeting at Barnsley FC, Mr Wright again met Mr Price, Mr Pagliara and an undercover reporter, this time to go over what would happen at the meeting with Mr Cryne.
Sitting down together at the Oulton Hall Hotel in Leeds, Mr Pagliara reminded all those present that they must pretend they did not know Mr Wright when they attended the next day’s meeting, as well as sticking to the plan that Mr Pagliara would be known as “Joseph” the translator.
Despite this, Mr Wright appeared to accidentally refer to “Pino” during the meeting. Mr Pagliara was aware that if Mr Cryne knew his real identity the meeting would be off: in 2005 he was banned from football for five years after he was implicated in a match-fixing scandal in Italy.
Mr Pagliara told Mr Wright: “Listen, let’s make this ----ing deal work tomorrow, yeah? And get this ----ing money for everybody. Proper money.” Mr Wright said: “Well that’s up to you. I’ve got you introduced, and opened the doors.” Mr Wright added: “I’m not doing it for myself. I want good players to come to the club, so we can progress. I’m sick of doing budget deals, driving 600 miles to look for a bargain.”
The undercover reporters had no more contact with Barnsley FC after the August 23 meeting. Neither Mr Cryne nor Mr Heckingbottom knew about the “bung” or the arrangements with the assistant manager.
On Wednesday a spokesman for Mr Wright said: “Any suggested acts contrary to criminal law or those of the FA and Fifa are categorically denied.”
When the Telegraph challenged Mr Pagliara about the payment to Mr Wright, he said: “We took an interest in Mr Wright, based on his achievement in sport. With regards to any players being moved to any club, these players would need to be moved based on their football ability.
“With regards to the…£5,000, that money was in actual fact for us because [the Far East company] refused to pay the month of July in which we had worked. We informed Tommy that that money was intended for us in order for us to be compensated.
"We asked Tommy if he would oblige and then pass this money on to us. On the meeting with the Barnsley chairman, I was indeed introduced as the translator. However, Tommy Wright made no secret that he had already met with the representative of the [Far East] group.” Mr Price has denied any wrongdoing.
- The explosive allegations at the top of the Championship
- How Hasselbaink drove up his fee for trip to Far East
- Italian 'manager eater' who was prepared to make a transfer killing