Thaksin Shinawatra was deemed a "fit and proper person" before purchasing Manchester City. (AFP/Getty Images)
Soccer: John F. Molinaro
Shinawatra stain points to the moral corruption of English soccer
Last Updated Friday, August 24, 2007
by John F. Molinaro
It's not often the sun shines on the blue half of Manchester, but then it's not often Manchester City looks down upon Manchester United while sitting perched atop the English Premiership.
Cast your eyes on the Premiership standings and you'll find City, otherwise known as The Blues, topping the table with a perfect 3-0 record, while city rivals and defending league champions United, aka The Red Devils, toil in 16th place after failing to earn a win in their first three games of the season.
Long considered English soccer's loveable rogues, Manchester City have been buoyed by the managerial genius of Sven-Goran Eriksson (back in soccer for the first time since stepping down as England's manager last year) and a slew of new players who appear to have turned the Blues into legitimate title contenders over night.
Of course, the elephant in the corner of the room that everybody is ignoring, from Manchester City officials and fans to the Premier League and the English FA alike, is new team owner Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand.
He has spent big bucks on new players since his 81-million pound takeover of Manchester City in July, but the fact that Thaksin, labelled "a human rights abuser of the worst kind" by one leading human rights group, was even allowed to buy the team points to the outright moral corruption of English soccer.
Thaksin was voted Prime Minister of Thailand in 2001 in a landslide victory and won a second term in 2005 with an even greater majority of the vote. His time in office was, however, blighted by allegations of an appalling record of human rights violations.
Among the accusations levelled against Thaksin include:
- Presiding over the execution-style killing of 2,500 minor drug dealers during one three-month period in 2003.
- Causing the deaths of 2,000 people after directing the Thai military to use any means necessary to stifle a separatist insurgency in the south of Thailand.
- Routinely intimidating and suppressing the Thai media.
Corruption allegations also dogged Thaksin. The Shinawatra family company, Shin Corp, appeared to be the benefactor of several government policy decisions as it quadrupled in value during his tenure in office.
Thaksin was toppled last September following a bloodless coup while he was attending a United Nations meeting in New York. He's been in exile in England ever since but he could be extradited to Thailand: Thaksin faces charges of conflict of interest stemming from a land purchase deal made by his wife from a government agency in 2003.
Thaksin has denied all the allegations against him, but it still makes you wonder how Manchester City officials could have gleefully accepted his millions and let him buy the team when his reputation is far from spotless.
And why didn't anybody else in England say anything?
Manchester City fans, a long-suffering bunch, don't appear to care, especially not now with their team in first place. As long as the team is winning, they don't seem to mind who's paying the players' salaries.
As for the English FA and the Premier League, they adopted an "as long as his cheque doesn't bounce, he's fit to be an owner" attitude and didn't block the sale of Manchester City to the deposed prime minister - this despite the Premiership's stringent "fit and proper person" test that all prospective suitors must pass before being allowed to buy a team.
But the silence of the British press on this matter has been deafening, to say the least.
Save for the efforts of Brian Glanville of the Sunday Times and The Guardian's David Conn, two of England's most esteemed sports journalists, nary a word has been written in the British media about this debacle.
Instead, newspaper journalists pack the press boxes of English soccer stadiums every Saturday and file their simple game reports, gushing with sickly sweet prose about another Manchester City victory.
All the while, they blithely ignore the real story - how Manchester City's early success this season has been bought and paid for with Thaksin's money. Some would call it blood money.
Glanville hit the nail on the head when he recently wrote that the stain of Thaksin's ownership of Manchester City threatens to tarnish the game at large, "so much so as to make even a journalist wonder whether, in continuing to cover a [soccer league] with such utter indifference to human suffering and chicanery, he is in some sense becoming himself an accessory after the fact."
At least someone has a conscience, which is a lot more than can be said about Manchester City, the Premiership and the English FA.
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