Uefa decided not to ban Besiktas immediately from European contests but has given the Istanbul based Turkish club a suspended sentence which in fact will be harsher than the punishment Besiktas actually deserves.
Istanbul / NationalTurk – Beşiktaş Chairman Fikret Orman and lawyer Emin Özkurt returned to Turkey happily after defending their club in an UEFA meeting in Nyon, Switzerland as Besiktas is not banned from European competitions for misleading the UEFA, yet. UEFA’s decision is a suspended sentence for Besiktas
Hardly something to be proud of nor happy about..
..and it cannot be counted as success to save Besiktas for crimes it did not commit.
Beşiktaş Istanbul, one of Turkey’s top three football clubs, was given a 500.000 Euro fine a suspended sentence by the Disciplinary Committee of the UEFA on Tuesday and the Turkish club was given a warning that it would be banned from all UEFA contests for two years if it violates any of the UEFA’s financial regulations in the next five years. This is not a warning this is a penalty to be given in the near future many claim.
The UEFA had previously sent an auditor from PricewaterhouseCoopers to İstanbul to look into the club’s finances and produce a final report. In the report, it was stated that the club had not paid money it owed some players ( UEFA Regulation 65th article ), though it had told the UEFA that it had paid all its debts in order to remain eligible to play in UEFA league matches.
Besiktas violeted UEFA’s regulation’s 65th and 66th articles and misled the governing body of European football. Besiktas should be banned from the next European contest effective immediately.
However the financial debts of Besiktas include also non paid taxes and debts to Turkish state. ( UEFA Regulation 66th article ) These so-called ‘ inland ‘ debts are regulated by Turkish Football Federation (TFF) and it is TFF which evaluated Besiktas status and found them eligible for any domestic competition. If someone is to blame it is TFF not Besiktas, since TFF is ( should be) the operating hand of UEFA in Turkey. In Turkey taxing is a non-delicate issue when it comes to football clubs and there is no strict code which regulates tax paying club – state relations. Many times has the state purged taxes of Turkish clubs on some occasions. Likewise the state ‘gives’ clubs stadiums (Galatasaray’s TT Arena, Trabzonspor’s New Stadium Project) and ‘takes’ some assets of these clubs in return ( like the area where Galatasaray’s former stadium is)
The sentence of UEFA on Besiktas, according to the report of the auditor, should look like this and be effective immediately : One year ban from European contests should Besiktas participate in one of them in the next 3 years and a fine of 300.000 euros, 100.000 of it deferred. Likewise the report’s validity is in question as of 19th April 2012, the date the report was given to Uefa, Besiktas has still debts to pay to Udinese for Thomas Zapatochny and Sivok’s transfers, but Besiktas has made the final payment to the Italian club on 20.10.2011, which can be seen here.
The valuator of this report, Jean Samuel Leuba is notorious for his deficient report of 2011 Champions League Semi-final match Barcelona vs Real Madrid. In his report, Mr Leuba did not add TV footage where Barcelona’s Busquets calls Real’s Marcelo ‘mono mono’ (monkey in sp.). Busquets and racially abuses him, was not fined in the end.
Another questionable point is the absence of Yıldırım Demiroren, the Besiktas chairman then and the current TFF president in the meeting with UEFA in Nyon as he was in charge of Besiktas and its finances then.
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