Harry's Games by John Crace Read Free Book Online Page A

to keep everyone in court awake for long enough at the same time to establish it.
    It wasn’t just Redknapp who was happy for the court to adjourn early on the Friday afternoon as Spurs had an away fourth-round FA Cup tie at Watford for him to go to; the rest of us also needed time off for good behaviour.
    â€˜You coming for more of this punishment next week?’ Redknapp joked with me as I bumped into him in the lobby on the way out.
    â€˜Sure am,’ I said.
    â€˜You must be a glutton for it. I don’t have any choice.’
    â€˜Good luck tonight, Harry.’
    â€˜Thank you very much.’
    It wasn’t until the second week that things became marginally clearer. No one was disputing the basic facts that Redknapp had opened a bank account in Monaco in 2002, that Mandaric had made two payments, totalling $295,000, into the account and that $100,000 had been transferred from it into a US bank account. It was the interpretation that was in question. The prosecution was alleging that the payments had been a scam to avoid Redknapp having to pay PAYE on a bonus due for the sale of Peter Crouch; the defence was saying that the contractual bonus had been paid through the proper channels and that this payment was a private arrangement between two friends.
    Mandaric was first in the witness box. Time and again over the course of more than six hours, Mr Black suggested that the moneywas a bonus and, time and again, Mandaric told him he was mistaken. ‘I know I’m sounding like a broken record, Mr Black,’ he said at one point, ‘but I can only tell you what happened.’
    To Mr Black’s credit, he had perfected the barrister’s sangfroid of looking as if every answer Mandaric was giving was utterly incriminating and just what he expected, but it was obvious he wasn’t really getting anywhere, as Mandaric was the model of consistency and politeness. Yes he, Mandaric, had originally been against buying Crouch: ‘I thought he was more of a basketball player than a footballer.’ Yes, Harry had pestered him for the full ten per cent bonus to which he had been entitled under his original contract: ‘Most people want more money if they can get it and Harry is a moaner. But he knew what he was due and accepted it.’
    The Monaco money had been entirely unrelated, he said; he and Redknapp had spent many hours together in the car travelling to games, they had become good friends and he wanted to give Redknapp the benefit of his investment expertise and make him some money. So he had told Redknapp to set up the bank account in Monaco – for Mandaric’s benefit rather than Redknapp’s – as he didn’t want to be liable for any tax on monies coming into the UK, and then transferred $145,000 into it as seed money for future investments. A short while later, he got Redknapp to sign a fax, transferring $100,000 of the seed money to his US investment company. ‘I was going to give Harry all the profit on anything I made and he was to return the stake.’
    Except there was no profit as Mandaric lost the lot. So, feeling embarrassed, he transferred a further $150,000 into the Rosie47 account to make up the shortfall, with a view to investing that money instead. Then he and Redknapp fell out – Redknapp left Portsmouth and took over as manager of nearby rivals, Southampton – and everyone forgot about the arrangement and the account until Redknapp remembered and declared it during the Quest inquiry.
    Redknapp looked on intently, though it became clear his mind wasn’t wholly on the case. The second Tuesday of the trial was 31 January, transfer deadline day. It was a day Redknapp as an inveterate buyer and seller of players would normally spend with his mobile phone clamped to his ear.
    â€˜What’s going on?’ he asked the football hacks during a break.
    â€˜Apparently, you’ve bought Louis Saha,’ someone told