Why is the FAI Refusing to Answer This Simple Question?
Over the past decade the Football Association of Ireland has taken, directly or indirectly, a most extraordinary series of actions in relation to three entities - Athlone Town Stadium Ltd. (a charitable purposes company with the task of protecting a stadium property for the people of Athlone), Athlone Town AFC Ltd. (the company name for the triumvirate or duumvirate of Michael O'Connor, John Hayden and David Dully) and Pre Season (a trans-national match-fixing, money laundering and investment firm). Chief among these actions has been its two or (if our one time legal team of McNelis/Masterson/Forde is to be believed) three attempts to take ownership of the property. I would argue that none of the FAI's actions have been to the benefit of our company and all of them have been to the benefit of the other two entities. All of it has happened within a culture of secrecy and obfuscation which could be best described by its good friend Bertie Ahern as ''smokes and daggers''.
This is a letter which our company's solicitor Patrick Cunningham sent to the FAI back in March. He also sent a similar letter of enquiry to A&L Goodbody, which that company passed on to the FAI. The FAI has not replied, indeed has not acknowledged either enquiry in any way. This follows on from a similar enquiry in my March 2020 letter to Fran Gavin of the FAI (see '66 Problems With the FAI ...' - November 18th), which was also ignored. The FAI was under a new CEO at that time, a Gary Owens. Today it is under a Jonathan Hill, but if anything the attitude has hardened. I would have expected some auld guff when John Delaney was in charge, I actually miss that. The FAI's not replying to last year's enquiry (from what Mr. Delaney commonly referred to as a member of the 'football family') could be said to be just bad manners. But not replying to a solicitor in a High Court case, in which the FAI itself is a Notice Party, that is something else entirely.
So what's the problem? The FAI runs the League of Ireland and there is a club called 'Athlone Town' which currently stands third in its First Division. Why does the FAI not want to tell us who this 'Athlone Town' happens to be? If it goes on to win promotion, win the Premier Division and win the Champions League ... well, how long will its identity be kept secret? And why would anyone want to keep it secret?
This is what I know about the clubs that have (probably) played at the stadium. A club which never got to play there is the one my cousins played for, Athlone Association Football Club, nicknamed 'the Town'. That club bit the dust in or around 1989. It was replaced by a club with which our company and I hold six contracts, Athlone Town (Association) Football Club. The members of the former club just went to sleep one night and woke up as members of the latter (debt-free) club. It was like magic, or something. There are lots of other examples of new clubs with similar names and colours being formed around the League of Ireland, relatively recently at the likes of Waterford FC and Cork City Foras Co-op, but they didn't happen covertly like in Athlone. Secret or in open view, I won't bother asking whether or not the process is legal. Sure 'tis the FAI, it's grand. Former committee member Gerry MacManus was particularly strong and articulate about this process, which is presumably one of the reasons why he was denied entry by the paid security guard to the June 2017 AGM [That is the one where Marc Fourmeaux spoke and the members were traffic-light-windscreen-washed with a motion to transfer the club's affairs to Athlone Town AFC Ltd.]. Athlone Town (Association) Football Club existed at least until the latter part of 2017. I say this because John Delaney told me at Abbotstown in June of that year that he was advising an unspecified ''them'' to do as 'his' Waterford had done. They possibly didn't take his advice for 2018, as they had an AGM and an EGM in that year; whether these were substantial or sham meetings is still unknown. As far as I am aware, the club has had no meetings since then and thus I assume it no longer exists.
The website which claims to be whichever club's official mouthpiece introduced an Athlone Town Athletic Football Club (since removed from the site) at some time in 2018, confusingly treating it publicly as one and the same club as the one which went before (or existed simultaneously). This revelation received a judicial echo on April 12th 2018, in the very first statement of 'fact' in Judgment no. 1 of Garda Dully's case - describing AT Athletic FC as ''an unincorporated association which has existed since 1887'' [writing ''has existed'' rather than, say, ''was formed'' suggests that the good Judge was not unaware of the actual historical and expediential situations - call it 'wriggle room']. He also awarded its members a huge sum of money on November 14th 2018. Despite Garda Dully's case being purportedly fought on behalf of the members of the old club, nothing was awarded to them and therefore no application was necessary for the transfer of its winnings to the members of the new club.
The affidavits of Messrs. Dully, Milton and Hayden had referred ambiguously to 'Athlone Town AFC', 'Athlone Town FC', 'Athlone Town Football Club' and even 'ATAFC'. I know nothing about AT Athletic FC, its constitution, its membership or who owns it. The tiny bit I know is from Paddy McCaul's answer on December 4th 2019 (see line 26 below) to a line of questioning which was quickly interrupted. It was reported in March 2017 in the Asia Times that a ''Chinese Portuguese consortium'' paid about US$500,000 for 70% of an Athlone club and reported in January 2018 in Gazeta Sporturilor that ''Chinese investors'' paid E500,000 for 70% of an Athlone club. It isn't possible to buy any percentage of an unincorporated association so, if the reports are correct, it is logical to assume that Pre Season owns 70% of AT Athletic FC or some other club, as well as having owned 50% of the shares in the now defunct Callaview Ltd. Which leads us back to the question of why the FAI is refusing to answer our solicitor's enquiry.
We are now going to court to get this (and other) information, as can be seen in our company's instruction to our solicitor below. It's pretty outrageous that more than three years after the substantive case ended, we still aren't in possession of this basic knowledge. I would like to express confidence that we will get it this time, but I know the legal establishment too well at this stage. They're just not that into the truth and justice thing. Still, it would be nice to be pleasantly surprised for once.
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