Athletic article on Chris Kirchner

[TuffLuff]

https://theathletic.com/5361931/2024/03/25/golf-football-chris-kirchner-derby-fraud/?source=user_shared_article
 

Does anybody still have an account and want to give the general gist of this article?

Is there anything new in it?

Edited March 25 by TuffLuff

[GboroRam]

Please no copying or linking to copyrighted material (other than from the original source) 

[Vimto Enjoyer]

4 hours ago, GboroRam said:

Please no copying or linking to copyrighted material (other than from the original source) 

[therealhantsram]

Largely a historical history. Apart from, they must have spoken to MM or someone close to him. No direct quotes but several new bits of info...

MM never believed JK was serious.

MM and JK never once spoke to each other.

MM and JK used the same bank.

When the money didn't arrive MM offered to send screenshot and instructions of which buttons to press to do a transfer.

 

Make of that what you will. I'm taking it with a pinch of salt.

 

For one thing I dont understand why MM would be getting any money from Kirchner at all. JK was not buying the stadium from Mel. He was supposed to be buying the club out of Admin. So it would be Quantuma or the club which should have been recieving the funds. Right?

Like Stephen Pearce's accounting, it doesn't quite add up.

[bimmerman]

22 minutes ago, therealhantsram said:

Largely a historical history. Apart from, they must have spoken to MM or someone close to him. No direct quotes but several new bits of info...

MM never believed JK was serious.

MM and JK never once spoke to each other.

MM and JK used the same bank.

When the money didn't arrive MM offered to send screenshot and instructions of which buttons to press to do a transfer.

 

Make of that what you will. I'm taking it with a pinch of salt.

 

For one thing I dont understand why MM would be getting any money from Kirchner at all. JK was not buying the stadium from Mel. He was supposed to be buying the club out of Admin. So it would be Quantuma or the club which should have been recieving the funds. Right?

Like Stephen Pearce's accounting, it doesn't quite add up.

JK? Didn't realise that fella from jamiriquai was involved 

[Steve How Hard?]

Sorry I've not got a link to any of the written part of the article just a picture in his current location. He looks happy enough.

[Mucker1884]

8 hours ago, bimmerman said:

JK? Didn't realise that fella from jamiriquai was involved 

I know, right!  😲

I read that, and thought I was suffering from virtual insanity!  

[BaaLocks]

1 hour ago, Mucker1884 said:

I know, right!  😲

I read that, and thought I was suffering from virtual insanity!  

I thought he meant this fella. Too soon?

[BramcoteRam84]

1 hour ago, BaaLocks said:

I thought he meant this fella. Too soon?

Lock up your train sets

[NOTSA74]

I've never subscribed to The Athletic but they do send me emails.

This link allowed me to see the full article:

The $25m fraudster who came so close to buying an English football club

[TuffLuff]

16 hours ago, therealhantsram said:

Largely a historical history. Apart from, they must have spoken to MM or someone close to him. No direct quotes but several new bits of info...

MM never believed JK was serious.

MM and JK never once spoke to each other.

MM and JK used the same bank.

When the money didn't arrive MM offered to send screenshot and instructions of which buttons to press to do a transfer.

 

Make of that what you will. I'm taking it with a pinch of salt.

 

For one thing I dont understand why MM would be getting any money from Kirchner at all. JK was not buying the stadium from Mel. He was supposed to be buying the club out of Admin. So it would be Quantuma or the club which should have been recieving the funds. Right?

Like Stephen Pearce's accounting, it doesn't quite add up.

Yes I thought the MM bit was most interesting, I do hope we do end up hearing a bit more from his side. Although the idea he was sceptical yet still willingness to work with Kirchner to agree a sale of his club seems a bit of a stretch to me. 

I’ve got to be honest I just don’t think it’s a great article though. There’s a pretty obvious ‘joining of dots’ here that isn’t addressed in that whether its the supporters groups, MM, Garry Cook, The EFL, the Administrators or Stretford , none of them take responsibility for what they nearly did to Derby County. No one goes ‘we got this wrong and we added to the months of limbo for Derby County fans who didn’t know whether they would have a club by the of the season’, and I think it borders on disgraceful from those who fell for Kirchner hook, line and sinker and they all seemingly pop up in this article without much criticism. It’s also poor that the article has no reference to the fans and what we were going through because of Kirchner’s actions

I also find it poor that supposedly Preston’s board are unsure about Kirchner but seemingly do not raise any alarm bells to the EFL. If you want to see a part of what’s wrong with football then I think that’s a good example. 

Like most football journalism today, it about scratches the surface on a subject but there is zero depth.

[RoyMac5]

15 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

Yes I thought the MM bit was most interesting, I do hope we do end up hearing a bit more from his side. Although the idea he was sceptical yet still willingness to work with Kirchner to agree a sale of his club seems a bit of a stretch to me. 

I’ve got to be honest I just don’t think it’s a great article though. There’s a pretty obvious ‘joining of dots’ here that isn’t addressed in that whether its the supporters groups, MM, Garry Cook, The EFL, the Administrators or Stretford , none of them take responsibility for what they nearly did to Derby County. No one goes ‘we got this wrong and we added to the months of limbo for Derby County fans who didn’t know whether they would have a club by the of the season’, and I think it borders on disgraceful from those who fell for Kirchner hook, line and sinker and they all seemingly pop up in this article without much criticism. It’s also poor that the article has no reference to the fans and what we were going through because of Kirchner’s actions

I also find it poor that supposedly Preston’s board are unsure about Kirchner but seemingly do not raise any alarm bells to the EFL. If you want to see a part of what’s wrong with football then I think that’s a good example. 

Like most football journalism today, it about scratches the surface on a subject but there is zero depth.

I think whilst safe to say many Derby fans dislike the EFL I can't see how they take the blame for believing Kirchner - see all the big US organisations that were also 'taken in'. I presume Kirchner showed the money but just forgot to say it wasn't his!

As for Preston, there were things written at the time, and talked about on here, but most were saying they had an anti-CK axe to grind because he backed out of their deal. They got the blame for 'increasing' the asking price and were judged accordingly.

Edited March 26 by RoyMac5

[MackworthRamIsGod]

CK was a clearly a joker, it was pretty quickly quite obvious, as I used to say, the Kirch is only here for the free Merch...although not even I expected him to be accused of fraud on such a scale..

However, if it wasn't for his arsing about and stringing us along, could the EFL have pulled the plug sooner? 

[TuffLuff]

4 hours ago, RoyMac5 said:

I think whilst safe to say many Derby fans dislike the EFL I can't see how they take the blame for believing Kirchner - see all the big US organisations that were also 'taken in'. I presume Kirchner showed the money but just forgot to say it wasn't his!

As for Preston, there were things written at the time, and talked about on here, but most were saying they had an anti-CK axe to grind because he backed out of their deal. They got the blame for 'increasing' the asking price and were judged accordingly.

I don’t think it’s about taking the blame because that indicates that someone wasn’t working with good intentions, and I think at that point almost everyone was. It wasn’t one person/organisations fault what was happening with Kirchner, but you have to accept some responsibility for how it went wrong. That’s what becomes apparent to me when reading that article, they have spoken to a lot of people and none seemingly took any responsibility, the writers didnt question them on it and they didn’t cotton on to the idea that they all played a part in getting Kirchner so far down the line. The people don’t take responsibility and the writers don’t make them take responsibility when it’s obvious when reading that they should. 

My point about Preston isn’t that they did anything wrong particularly, but more that its similar to what is being said by @therealhantsram about MM, it’s ok for people to say they smelt a rat with Kirchner but at the time they didn’t raise any alarm bells with the EFL. It should be in Preston’s interest as much as Morris’ interest to declare to the EFL that they had doubts over Kirchner’s suitability. A Preston source calls Kirchner a tyre kicker in the article, well again they contributed to that tyre kicking when it came to Derby County! The article again, in my opinion, kinda shows an issue that helped Kirchner get further down the line but doesn’t delve further into the significance of it. Or both the Preston source and MM’s source are saving face which should be  rebutted in print, because they were both willing to try and sell to him!

The article brings up a lot of issues but doesn’t give them any significance essentially.

 

 

[Crewton]

The thing that does come over to me from the article is that clearly, in person and as someone selling a vision, Kirchner came across as plausible to many people who must have dismissed tons of BS merchants over the years i.e the financial institutions and private investors that backed his company in several rounds of fund-raising. What was clearly lacking was that detached, loud voice in the room who says "hang on a minute, this doesn't smell right to me" and the oversight and governance that would have flagged up his transgressions before he ever got past first base with Quantuma.

On the question of "who should take some responsibility" I think Quantuma, their lawyers, accountants and the EFL must all cop their share. From the club pov and the organisations that were desperate for the club to be saved, I think it's a little harsh to criticise them heavily. They weren't privy to all the information that Quantuma and the EFL had, weren't involved in any direct negotiations with Kirchner and may have been reluctant to put a spanner in the works if that had led to the club going to the wall. You could say that they were too close to be objective.

[RoyMac5]

1 hour ago, TuffLuff said:

I don’t think it’s about taking the blame because that indicates that someone wasn’t working with good intentions, and I think at that point almost everyone was. It wasn’t one person/organisations fault what was happening with Kirchner, but you have to accept some responsibility for how it went wrong. That’s what becomes apparent to me when reading that article, they have spoken to a lot of people and none seemingly took any responsibility, the writers didnt question them on it and they didn’t cotton on to the idea that they all played a part in getting Kirchner so far down the line. The people don’t take responsibility and the writers don’t make them take responsibility when it’s obvious when reading that they should. 

My point about Preston isn’t that they did anything wrong particularly, but more that its similar to what is being said by @therealhantsram about MM, it’s ok for people to say they smelt a rat with Kirchner but at the time they didn’t raise any alarm bells with the EFL. It should be in Preston’s interest as much as Morris’ interest to declare to the EFL that they had doubts over Kirchner’s suitability. A Preston source calls Kirchner a tyre kicker in the article, well again they contributed to that tyre kicking when it came to Derby County! The article again, in my opinion, kinda shows an issue that helped Kirchner get further down the line but doesn’t delve further into the significance of it. Or both the Preston source and MM’s source are saving face which should be  rebutted in print, because they were both willing to try and sell to him!

The article brings up a lot of issues but doesn’t give them any significance essentially.

 

 

What would you want 'them' to take responsibility for? It only started to unravel when the money didn't arrive - why didn't Kirchner's money arrive? The fact that it wasn't Kirchner's money couldn't be deduced until he didn't hand it over.

 

[MadAmster]

Who on Earth is JK? Rowling?

[Ram-Alf]

When the club you have supported for a great majority of your life is going to be saved...most if not all were pleased beyond belief, Yes there may have been 1 or 2 who didn't fall for it, But imo we were all caught up in these negotiations.

What went on in the meantime will leave a very sour taste in my mouth until I get the calling, Quantuma were in bed with the EFL as much as they accepted all that went against DCFC and were told if they didn't appeal that would be the end of the matter, They didn't appeal, The 12 point deduction I have no issue with, The extra 9 points that were dished out could and should have been appealed...but the EFL did and then we were screwed.

The EFL with their "we can't get involved when 1 club sue's another club" altho I believe there's in their rules that 1 club can not sue another club, They let Boro loose to hold up any sale until MM came along and pissed circa £3million to Boro.

The ambulance chaser says DCFC paid up, Until I see evidence I'll believe he was blowing smoke up their supporters ass's.

So no finger pointing where the Yank is concerned but a bucket load of fingers pointing at the Admin/EFL for their callous shenanigans    

[kevinhectoring]

11 hours ago, Ram-Alf said:

Quantuma were in bed with the EFL as much as they accepted all that went against DCFC and were told if they didn't appeal that would be the end of the matter, They didn't appeal, The 12 point deduction I have no issue with, The extra 9 points that were dished out could and should have been appealed...

If appealed, the proceedings would have been ongoing for months if not years and the sale would have been delayed. The costs of the proceedings would have been significant and Q didn’t have the funds. And we had damaged ourselves under Mm by fighting our regulator. 
Their woeful inability to understand the football creditors rule was astonishingly inept. But Q’s decision not to appeal in the EFl case was unsurprising and - judged from the outside - the right one. 
 

[TuffLuff]

On 26/03/2024 at 20:24, RoyMac5 said:

What would you want 'them' to take responsibility for? It only started to unravel when the money didn't arrive - why didn't Kirchner's money arrive? The fact that it wasn't Kirchner's money couldn't be deduced until he didn't hand it over.

 

What I think its a different debate for a different day, but I think many legitimised Kirchner for their own means rather than the long term health of DCFC, whether out of desperation or incompetency. I don’t think it’s a case of going OTT against anyone involved, but there’s probably lessons to be learnt that there is maybe a bit more due diligence needed over someone who has no paper trail and says he made his money through crypto.

That’s the issue with the article, it’s alright saying ‘look at this wrongun’ and MM or Preston saying ‘we knew he was a wrongun’ but they didn’t raise any concerns at a time when they could. Yes there is an issue of football clubs that are going into the wrong persons hands, but part of that is those that help legitimise those people and push them through in the first place. Saying they didn’t know absolves the EFL, Cook, Stretford, Quantama and a whole lot of others who caused a lot more mess for Derby County.