Sunday 22 March 2020

Jury out on Nimer

As expected, majority ESI shareholder, Taynoon Nimer used the club's website and his own Instagram account to present his version of events from last week's Board Meeting. He reiterated that Southall and Heller had been removed from the Board of Directors and that he was appointing two replacements. He also reconfirmed his commitment to getting the 'source of funds' issue resolved with the EFL and following through on the original plan to invest money in the club and make it successful. Charlton fans are clinging to Nimer's words and the promise that everything will be alright.

He told us that all the necessary paperwork covering funding was submitted with the EFL on Thursday 12th March, so we should hopefully see some movement on that this week, if indeed, everything is now in order. However, given the tale of woe since the takeover was 'completed' there has to remain serious doubts that Nimer will be able to follow-through. Either because his paperwork doesn't provide a strong enough case in terms of satisfying the EFL in respect of the source of funds or indeed the commitment of what's needed to run the club for a minimum of two years. There is also the issue of the huge sum needed to buy the Valley and Sparrows Lane from Roland Duchatelet which is what Duchatelet is obviously expecting, as it effectively completes the sale and gets him out of Charlton without taking serious losses. On balance, it looks to me like Nimer may struggle here, particularly if he was relying on new investors to come on board to allow him to complete the deal. 

As if things haven't been complicated enough, two former Directors (of a small group of former Directors) who have an historic first call on a collective £7m debt on the club in the event of a sale, have also now made their move and have a court hearing this week seeking an injunction to uphold their claim and force either payment of their debts or, if that's not forthcoming, to get the takeover ruled illegal. These Directors served the club faithfully in the past and the debts they were owed were only ever intended to be repaid if the club regained it's Premier League status in future. The logic in that clause was to make the debt 'friendly' in the sense that it would only be payable if the club won the PL lottery and could do so easily. There was never any interest or other growth attached to this debt, so the former Directors could be considered to be acting to protect the club's interest in the event the money isn't forthcoming from Taynoon Nimer. 

The burning irony in all this is that we could very well find ourselves rejoicing that we have been saved from inadequate or unscrupulous new owners and see the club land back in the lap of Roland Duchatelet. If that were to happen, you would have to hope that he would finally see that his determination to recoup all of his losses whilst running the club have always been unrealistic and that Southall and Nimer have proven that their offer had a huge hole in it because they were extremely unlikely to have ever been able to have raised the funds. 

In the meantime, Nimer has confirmed that Claudiu Florica and Marian Mihail have joined the Board. The Romanian pair have been working with Nimer for a number of months supporting his bid to acquire Dinamo Bucharest. Mihail spoke with CAST on Friday and told us that he and Florica were keen to help "sorting out the situation at Charlton." Mihail was open to all of the questions asked and displayed a good knowledge of the issues and the recent history. He is confident the money is there, that EFL will be satisfied and that the current Transfer Embargo will be lifted. He also addressed "the elephant in the room" relating to criminal charges pending against Claudiu Florica concerning fraud allegations involving Microsoft. He believes progress has been made in the case and that a not guilty verdict will be delivered soon. 

Mihail's words were encouraging but I am reminded very much that we heard very similar reassurances from Matt Southall only a couple of months ago. I also feel decidedly uncomfortable in trusting Florica at this moment given Southall's behaviour as soon as he got his hands on Charlton's money.

The jury is well and truly out and we have to hope that we get some answers this week because the club's funds will be running low and, even with the EFL bringing forward central payments to help clubs with cash-flow in the current financial emergency, the Administrator can't be too far off given where we are. 

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