Everton takeover: Kieran Maguire reveals why Farhad Moshiri being forced to write-off loans
Farhad Moshiri is being forced to write-off his Everton loans by the Premier League as part of the 777 Partners takeover to protect the club, according to Kieran Maguire.
Speaking on The Price of Football podcast on Thursday (28 March), the football finance expert said the governing body appear to be asking the Toffees owner to disregard his loans to ensure the US investment firm doesn’t take over the club and have to pay off any existing debts.
While he admitted that the league could accept clauses being paid to the Iranian businessman based on any on-field success recorded by the Blues, he believes it’s trying to prevent him from calling in his debts further down the line.
“Writing off the debts to a certain extent is a paper exercise,” said Maguire. “Historically, with Abramovich and Tony Bloom and some others, it’s effectively the bank of mum and dad in the sense that, while legally the debt is due for repayment, practically that’s not the case.
“I think what the Premier League would insist on is a formal write-off of those debts because whoever is in charge at Everton football club should not be acquiring it with this weight around your ankles, this sort of ball and chain of potentially having to repay.
“We’ve seen with regards to a couple of other clubs who have been sold, where the owner has written off the debt but then there’s been a couple of add-on clauses, such as if Everton get into the Champions League, does that mean there’s an additional £10million to Moshiri or whatever.
“That could be acceptable to the Premier League for all we know, but I think what they’re trying to do is to give the club some protection. What we don’t want is Moshiri in two years saying ‘I’ve not asked for it for two years, I want the money back now’ because then we’re back to square one.”
Premier League taking steps to protect Everton in takeover saga
Although the Premier League has been extremely unpopular with the way it’s handled Everton’s points deduction saga, it sounds as though it’s trying to protect the club in this instance.
The last thing the Toffees want is to get back on their feet and start moving forward again, only for Moshiri to potentially call in his debts further down the line.
He could potentially be set to lose out on a considerable amount of money if that is to be the case, but this is a situation he’s created following his mismanagement at Goodison Park.
The Blues owner has been silent on the takeover situation over the past few months after many of the fans made it clear they want him out of their club.
But as 777 appear to be struggling to provide the information required to complete the deal, which was agreed back in September, he could be in charge on Merseyside for a while longer yet.
In other Everton news, Jeff Stelling has mooted a £45million exit for one Toffees star.
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