Shares in a Cayman Island Company? Stinks of immoral tax cheating to me.

Sorry Dom but as a Chelsea fan it's a bit far fetched to brand other clubs owners "immoral" !

Do we pay less tax from being in tax havens to be able to spend more on players then?

I have no idea but if paying less tax is immoral then so is forcibly taking control of an oil company whose resources should have belonged to the incredibly poor people of Russia then using it to buy a football club.

I don't think Roman even did that did he? It was Putin.

It was the whole Russian government/Russian mafia that did that. Basically after Gorbachev the whole countries resources were carved up among a few influential members one of whom I presume was Abramovich, who then went on to force another Russian to sell him more shares in an oil company at a vastly reduced rate.

Abramovich was very young when all that was happening. He was just in the right place at the right time.

What I'm seeing here is avoiding paying tax before bringing the extra profits back home to put towards playing staff.

Roman got himself elected governor of a state of Russia, then gave tax breaks to companies within that region that he either owned or was on the board of.

Though that's more tax avoidance than out and out evasion.

Probably illegal here! But not there.

He also sat down the owner of a large amount of shares in the oil company and threatened him to sign the rest over for about 10% of what they were worth. He took him to court over it after the event when he didn't have a gun pointed at his head and Roman settled out of court, that pretty much confirms it.

So all football clubs should consider paying less tax so they can have higher profits to buy new players? Or should they all go to Russia to take control of regions and tax affairs for said regions?

If we could pay less tax and spend more on players then why not? If it's not illegal then you'd be stupid not to do it, it's not like Chelsea don't already contribute hugely to the UK tax revenue annually. What do we get in return? Policing bills? Planning permission for re-development continually turned down? Our captain arrested on some nonsense charge?

With all that is being said at the moment regarding banking and taxes and profits, I would have thought more would be made of the same thing in an equally profitable business type.

I am suspicious of any proposals that are dreamed up by the Glazers....

You need to get them out and get some rich arabs on board sharpish!

As much as people whinge about the Glazers they haven't really done much wrong yet in my eyes, we have still spent around the same amount of money we have always done every season.. yeah they have brought debt to the club but are managing it and have halfed it in 3 years

You're still spending £70m of revenue on their servicing their debt, that's money coming out of the club that shouldn't be. It's obvious that they see the club as a business opportunity so while they're in charge they're going to be making decisions based on the benefit to them rather than the club as a whole.

Yeah I can see that, but if it had affected transfers etc it would bother me but it hasn't the money has always been given to spend... before money was spent and just made shareholders richer so the extra money still isn't seen

Like Arsenal have been doing?

Timely sales have helped them to keep pace with recent spending.