Associated - A Letter to Jonathan Hill, FAI CEO

Since posting the letter (below), I've learned that one of the Athlone Towns has made a deal with Valeo Futbol Club, not with Irish Sea FC. Having gained far too much experience of guys working the system for their own benefit, I cannot take anyone at face value. That said, Valeo's founder Emelio Williams is an engaging and intelligent character. He is a coach who says ''Adults have hijacked the impromptu, free-spirited play that usually is the domain of kids ...Right now, we suffer from over-coaching and too many adults in the system''. I love that. But Valeo is clearly a business, and its charging Jamaicans up to US$295 for a day's training (with coaches connected to Sporting Lisbon and Atletico Madrid and camps using those famous clubs' names) seems pretty steep for a country where that amounts to around 12 days of an average wage - equivalent to around E1,250 here.

It is likely that the deal happened through the Leal-Ganly (*) family connection. Unless I am wrong and Valeo's operations in Athlone, Boston, Cape Verde, the Caribbean, Ecuador, Kenya and Portugal are a front for something nefarious (tea smuggling?), then it seems unlikely that they are throwing sufficient cash to interest Messrs. O'Connor and Hayden in a full club sale. There are reasons to think I may be wrong on that though, and who knows how many 'clubs' have been readied for purchase or investment?

The club's in-house magazine, the Westmeath Independent, has noticeably taken to referring to Mr. Hayden as the ''Club President'', which, if correct, points to a full (or majority stake) club sale. The meaningless appellation of President was invented by then Club Secretary Damien Milton in February 2012. It was used as a sop for Tony Knight, then Club Chairman and a decent man who obviously had to be removed. He was replaced as Chairman by the McCaul loyalist John Croughan, with Mr. Milton becoming vice-Chairman. Milton would plead tiredness some months later and pass the vice-Chairman torch to Mr. Hayden (not actually possible due to the latter not being a member of the club, but who cares about such trifling details?), while Croughan would officially resign to pursue an FAI job he had no chance of getting (he had the option of resigning after he got the job).

The media are central to the process of 'authenticating' this kind of thing. They print what they are given to print. ''Paper never refused ink'', as my dad used to say. The Westmeath Independent's agreeing to act as stenographer for Athlone Town AFC CLG has been central to the success (so far) of Mr. O'Connor's and Mr. Hayden's magical money machine. Apparently now, ''generations of players to come (will) access new opportunities to play football at the highest levels in Ireland and Europe''.

If there has been a full club sale, then the company would now be in limbo, as its claimed purpose is to run that club. It would therefore need favours from both Valeo and the FAI (confidentiality clauses anyone?), so that it can continue to pretend to be running the club until the day of the big cash in on the stadium property. Then the company can disband and the boys can live happily ever after.

* The footballing Leal twins came through the Valeo system. Their uncle is Michael Ganly, who was a project committee member of my company and one of the guarantors of its debt.

So, here's a letter delivered to the office of Jonathan Hill at 7.24 am on March 15th. So far, there has been no reply or acknowledgement of it. I don't expect that situation to change anymore than I expect the FAI to change. Its people will look after the association and the association will look after its people. In Athlone's case, it can't be said to be a love that dare not speak its name, as the love only popped into the closet for less than a year. It is, much more practically, a love that dare not speak the club's name.

Dear Mr. Hill, though I've heard little mention of it for a long time, I believe that the FAI is currently suing Deloitte for breach of its duties as auditor of the association's accounts. This follows on from Deloitte's use of the H4 form and its accusations that your directors had misled it. In that light, the legal action makes little obvious sense. We can only hope that it is authentic and not one of those conflicts engineered in order to protect the well connected from criminal prosecution.

I write to you now because of recent developments in Athlone. The guarantors of Athlone Town AFC CLG (which has been the management company of Athlone Town Association FC, Athlone Town Athletic FC and probably one other football club) are said to have sold or to be in the process of selling the football club or some entity identifiable as same.

Talks with Irish Sea Football Club Ltd. appeared to have broken down some months ago. But the presence of nine US connected players and a Ukrainian in the current Athlone Town squad gives an Irish Sea look to things there. Irish Sea has in the past talked about forming pathways for footballing talent between Ireland and the US. It has also talked about running a team in the League of Ireland consisting only of Ukrainian and Armenian players - a startlingly different proposition.

In anticipation of a sale, Athlone Town AFC CLG registered three years' worth of audited accounts (2021 - Documents A) at the CRO in just 34 days. These make for interesting reading, though they are short on specifics (accounts put in for registration by the old club thirteen years ago mention 34 categories of receipts and expenditure which are not mentioned here) and raise a lot of new questions.

The FAI has awarded licences to whichever club the company was running at the time for each of the years of these accounts. It has either done so while approving something very similar or it has been provided with different accounts. Are there any significant differences in the accounts which were submitted for registration purposes?

It is not clear if Athlone Town AFC CLG is the vendor or the product for sale. As far as I know (which is not much), it is not possible to sell a company limited by guarantee, even though ''Shareholders' funds'' are mentioned in the accounts. Nor is it possible to sell Athlone Town Association FC, a private members' club. The FAI has yet to accede to our requests to view the constitution of Athlone Town Athletic FC or to share with us who its members are or were. As ever, we are forced to piece together a picture of what this club might be, based on newspaper reports, CRO submissions and a small amount of insider knowledge, leading to conclusions which may not be perfectly accurate but are unlikely to be very far off the mark.

Our conclusions in this case are that the company set up the Athletic club subsequent to its registering of the body corporate business name Athlone Town AFC on May 12th, 2016. The company held 30% ownership of the club and sold 70% to Pre Season for E500,000 (Document B) in late 2016.

The investment money is unmentioned in any accounts to date (Callaview Ltd. did not submit any), so we do not know where it is today. Five possibilities apply: (i) The money was returned to Pre Season. (ii) The money is in an escrow account. (iii) The money has been or is being laundered into private accounts. (iv) The money went into the club and was used to pay off its creditors. (v) The money was sold on as part of an investment package. The FAI should already know which of the five applies. If not, it should make it its business to find out.

The FAI should also know if an additional Pre Season investment was made in 'purchasing' any part of our company's property. This should not be considered a serious possibility, but has to be considered on account of the FAI's refusing to share the contracts with us. As we have had to learn the hard way, secrecy equals complicity and complicity means money.

The heading of 'Business review' in the 2021 accounts introduces us to what is apparently yet another new club - an Athlone Town Associated Football Club. The timing is impeccable, as four days into the period they cover the ex-President of the FAI Paddy McCaul answered a cross-examination inquiry about the Athletic club with '' I've heard that there was a ... I don't know if Athlone Town Athletic Club has a football function.'' I've wondered what he meant for a long time, but it makes sense in the context of its having gone out of business and been replaced by the Associated club. 'Associated' could be a typo, but seeing as nobody has told the public which of the other two clubs was playing there, why should anyone make such an assumption?

It is natural that the company would want, if it could get away with it, to create another new club to sell, rather than have to hand over 70% of the take to Pre Season. But no new club has been registered with the CRO. Is the company hoping to sneak it through under the same body corporate business name, the conveniently initial-ending Athlone Town AFC, that was apparently used to create the saleable Athletic club?

None of this would be problematic if the FAI would agree to reveal the identity of the Athlone clubs to which it awarded playing licences. But it refuses to do this. Can you at least confirm that Athlone Town Association FC, having had its last meeting four years, three months and twenty five days ago, no longer exists? It might be worth noting that the unaudited accounts for 2017 and 2018 make no mention of ANY football club, presumably because two clubs were running concurrently in those years.

Note 18 claims that the company has recently been declared the legal owner of the stadium. That happened back on April 12th 2018 and the courts ordered in December 2021 that the ownership be transferred to another entity chosen by a committee composed of Mr. McCaul, one other nominee of our company and an unlimited number of nominees of Garda David Dully, Secretary of Athlone Town AFC CLG. Then there is Note 13, the directors' explanation for restating the 2018 accounts. The note itself starts out with a 'mistake' (also at the very odd Note 10); the company took over the club's activities on June 28th 2017, not ''during the year ended November 30th 2018''. No explanation is provided for why the 2017 accounts , which the association will know covers the prime year of Pre Season's activities, are NOT restated. The fluctuations in ''members loans'' are unexplained. As are the extraordinary rises in turnover and expenses during the Covid years, when the opposite might have been expected.

The June 28th 2017 'AGM' is pretty much key to understanding everything that has happened since then. It was held in our company's stadium and attended by 26 'club members'. A bogus club constitution (since put before the High Court) had been written up (Document C), which absurdly included the membership fees at Rule 13. These were set at E250 per annum, a tenfold increase surely intended to prevent actual club members from attending club meetings. This intention is given away in the wording of Rule 13 - ''payable in full prior to the AGM''. In fairness to the directors, it is always fun working out their schemes, because they like to leave little clues.

The 23 others who did attend that day (Pre Season's Marc Fourmeaux attended as a guest - Document D) all qualified as friends, relatives or loyal servants of the three members of Athlone Town AFC CLG. In all likelihood, the only person to have paid the E250 membership fee was executive committee member Gerry MacManus, who was prevented from entering by the paid security guard. Does the FAI approve of the conduct of this meeting?

Even on its own terms (Rule 37 of the bogus constitution) the transfer of club affairs to the private company was clearly illegal. It may be possible, but is surely unusual, for a private members' club to have all its affairs transferred to a management company. But how such a company can end up owning the private members' club is beyond me. As is how it is allowed to break its own first condition of the 'resolution' (Document E) - to have the club's executive committee of 6 (bogus version) or 15 (real version - Document F) transferred to the management company. If you can clarify any of this, I would appreciate it.

Because of the secrecy which has been maintained around this company's activities (very much in contrast to the days when the club used to run the club), it has been very difficult to work out what exactly is going on. At face value, the new company was taking on the club's enormous debt without any intimation that any of the members would benefit in any way from the transfer. But what is the status of that debt now? And is the FAI on board with the remarkable sums of money which have found their way to just two members' families? It should be noted that the accounts contradictorily cite ''Directors' and Secretary emoluments'' under the heading of ''Directors' remuneration''. Garda Dully is not a director and any payment to him would be illegal.

Unless I am mistaken, almost none of these events would have happened without the FAI's blessing. In fact, it appears that the FAI played a large part in the club's affairs being effectively handed over to one man, the non-member John Hayden, in 2012. This followed on from two or more meetings at Abbotstown (and a round of golf with Mr. Gavin, if memory serves) involving Athlone Town Secretary Damien Milton. Is it mere coincidence or something the association would consider worthy of investigation that Mr. Milton's brother-in-law Michael O'Connor and Mr. Hayden are today the overwhelming beneficiaries of this event?

If not composed by the then Club Chairman Mr. Hayden, his approval should have been required for a 2015 document (Document G) in which our company was impersonated. It was sent to the FAI in an envelope marked with something along the lines of 'Refer to so-and-so only' or 'Not for distribution beyond department' - I forget what it was. A Ms. Coppinger reported the document to the FAI's in-house solicitor Rea Walshe. Ms. Walshe was said to have been troubled by it, but she did not refer the matter to the Gardai. Nor, remarkably, did she alert our company. In March 2020, I asked the FAI, in a letter (Document H - see '66 Problems' 18/11/2020) copied to your predecessor Gary Owens, if the document was later used to deceive a government agency into paying out a E200,000 grant. The FAI has yet to reply to the inquiry.

The FAI's insistence on automatically awarding a playing licence to a club which refused to pay the rent (or pay anything, including the electric and the expenses of its amateur players) placed our company in the position of having to negotiate with the people who, as I saw it, had hijacked the club. This did not go well, as you may have heard.

The Pre Season match fixing scandal blew up in May 2017. While I found it embarrassing to be in any way associated with a club which was having its name dragged through the mud yet again, I was relieved that the stadium was no longer in danger, as I believed that no court worth its name would facilitate the ambitions of people with connections to organised crime. Little did I know.

FAI investigators got first run on the Gardai, in the second week of May. But it wasn't a very thorough investigation. No person in a position of authority (including referees, always the first people to be questioned in cases of match fixing) was seriously interviewed. It is not clear if the players were seriously interviewed either, but they were asked to hand over their phones and bank records and agreed to do so. The most significant long term action taken against the players was their being made to sign confidentiality agreements. In the cases of the many honest players on that team, I find it sinister that they are still legally prohibited from telling their stories.

The final report was also made confidential. And the FAI would later refuse to send me copies of the Pre Season contracts, citing ... yeah. Why is confidentiality cited so often in matters relating to Athlone Town, which remains the only Irish club to hold contracts with a match fixing syndicate?

The investigators were the aforementioned Ms. Walshe and Mr. Gavin. Mr. Gavin had said in March of that year that ''I have met the new investors'' prior to the FAI's approval being given for the project. My information is that it was the FAI's CEO John Delaney who met with Pre Season, while Mr. Gavin discussed the project only with the also aforementioned Michael O'Connor. If the information is indeed correct, then Mr. Gavin was saying something publicly as an official of the association that he knew not to be true. The obvious follow up question is why would he want to do that? And what exactly was agreed at those meetings?

The club was feeling the heat in May 2017, not from the FAI but from the international media. A 'burglary' took place where ''a lot of files were ransacked and scattered around'' (Document I). [In one of those funny kind of coincidences which tend to beset our opponents, the 'burglars' struck again last year (Document J), less than two months before the audited accounts went in. The club statement drew attention to the theft of the ''club's computer''. It should be noted that, under the heading of 'Accounting records', ''computerised accounting records'' and records being maintained at the stadium are mentioned. It should also be noted that the pre-burglary accounts do not mention any computerised accounting system and state that the records are maintained at what I believe to have been Garda Dully's home in Co. Roscommon]

The then FAI CEO John Delaney phoned me a week or so before the first of those events, while I was grocery shopping in Athlone. He told me that he was with my fellow shareholders Cieran Temple and Paddy McCaul. He said that they were anxious to sign the stadium over to the FAI for free but obviously couldn't do so without my approval. He said that if I didn't agree, then we would find ourselves in the High Court with no chance of success. I took that as a threat, intended or not. He then said that as a mark of thanks for my ''contribution to football in Athlone'' the FAI would give me some international match tickets. I declined the gift.

Mr. Delaney and the association tried again on June 21st. Following a meeting in Abbottstown (at which I have reason to believe that a listening device was used when Mr. Delaney and Ms. Walshe left the room), I agreed to sell the stadium to the FAI for twenty annual payments of E30,000. Even accounting for a big personal loss, it was a relief to be finished with it and, or so I thought, at least the stadium would be in safe hands. A day later, Mr. McCaul looked away as he handed me the contract (Document K). It was soon obvious why, and I refused to have anything to so with it. Ms. Walshe would tell me later that she put in the offending Term 3, while Mr. Gavin would tell me that A&L Goodbody drafted the entire document. I don't believe either official was telling the whole truth.

[Just to be clear, we never had any objection in principle to any public interest group - such as the FAI, Westmeath County Council or the club - taking ownership of the property without paying for it, though I've always considered such a move unfair to our creditors. Where we have had a major problem is with the absence of any guarantee, similar to that provided in our constitution, that any of these groups would be under an obligation to protect the property against predators for the people of Athlone. While my fellow shareholders disagreed and continue to disagree with me on this point, it is a red line for me. In other words, I believe that unless the property is on the books of a public interest group as a significant investment, then there is little or nothing to prevent its subsequent transfer to private interest groups such as Athlone Town AFC CLG]

A month later, at the Master's Court, the FAI's (Notice Party) counsel Mr. Marry stood directly in front of Garda Dully's counsel Mr. Durack and, I was told (I found it hard to hear what was being said), declared the FAI's support for Garda Dully's action. For this to happen at any time would be unconventional at best. For it to happen at a time when the two parties were purporting to be at loggerheads over match fixing is inexplicable at best. Why did it happen?

In September 2017 our legal team, led by our counsel Michael Forde, told us that the FAI had agreed to pay every cent that we had invested in the stadium in return for ownership. All we had to do was accept the legal validity of Mr. Hayden's Deed of Trust (then apparently in tatters) and the FAI would then effectively have to formally step in to pay off the liability accruing from the document's indemnity clause. We did as advised, and we never heard from the FAI again. Why did this happen?

Subsequent to the Walshe-Gavin report, the FAI found two of the match fixing Athlone Town players guilty, using video evidence which was already in the public realm. Then it sought to add newspaper and social media reports (also in the public realm) to the 'prosecution' for no apparent reason (the contracts were never mentioned as possible evidence) - reports it had chosen not to use before. Judge Costello then awarded injunctions to the players against this move.

To say that Messrs. Labuts and Sfrijan had a high powered legal team in their corner is an understatement. Their solicitor Stuart Gilhooly was also a senior counsel. When the proceedings commenced, Mr. Gilhooly was President of the Law Society and their counsel Paul McGarry SC was Chairman of the Bar Council. I don't think anyone would argue that players who had lived in student accommodation in Athlone could afford to hire such people to fight their case. Which raises the obvious question of how it happened. Based on my experience of how Irish legal representation works, clients such as Mr. Labuts and Mr. Sfrijan would only be taken on when the outcome of the case would have been agreed in advance, i.e. if the opposition, in this case the FAI, would end up paying ALL the legal costs. I am open to correction on this.

Mr. Gavin was the FAI's sole deponent in the case. It should be noted that it was Mr. Gavin who first brought Mr. Gilhooly into the Professional Footballer's Association of Ireland. In fact, they had played football together for Malahide United. In yet another small-world-isn't-it observation (you will, I assume, have noticed quite a bit of this since you came to work in Ireland), I notice that Mr. McGarry is currently representing Mr. Delaney in the High Court.

Mr. Gilhooly took Mr. Labuts's case successfully to the European Court of Arbitration for Sport, saying later that ''The world of football supported us all the way'' - an unusual turn of phrase considering the FAI's prominence in the Irish 'world of football'. Mr. Gilhooly's take on the case is akin to that of the overturning of a criminal conviction based on dangerously inadequate evidence. Which is all very nice, but it doesn't do anything to aid the fight against match fixing and money laundering operations like Pre Season's.

In the end, Mr. Gilhooly was only overturning a case provided by two people - his legal colleague (of sorts) Ms. Walshe and his friend Mr. Gavin. And that case was nothing more than what the public thought it knew - which arguably made Mr. Labuts's case as much a psychological operation as a legal one. The precedent it set was extraordinary; that any interpretation of actions on a sporting pitch can only ever be subjective to the point of meaninglessness (which can be extended to cover the notoriously crooked sport of horse racing). In real world terms, this means that provided a Pre Season can bring on board a number of people sufficiently well connected (in Ireland's case - accountants, barristers and football administrators) to shackle any police investigation, then it has free rein to run its enterprise until exposed by media - after which it can simply relocate the enterprise to another jurisdiction.

The biggest question is how Messrs. Labuts and Sfrijan settled Irish High Court cases when they weren't in the country and had a limited command of English - very limited in one case. If, say, John Hayden BL, joint owner (with Pre Season) of Callaview Ltd. and a very public supporter of the accused players' 'human rights', happened to have been in the High Court on the day in question, would it not be reasonable to assume that he had settled the cases 'on their behalf'? But that would be illegal, as he was not a litigant. Trouble is, Mr. Hayden was indeed in the High Court on April 11th 2018.

I would like to hear an honest account of how exactly the cases were settled. And of how the players' costs were paid. And if any other payment was made to Messrs. Labuts and Sfrijan as part of the settlement deal. Please don't use the word 'confidential' in replying to these inquiries. These are very serious public interest issues which should be dealt with transparently. The FAI has often claimed to be intolerant of match fixing. It is surely time it backed up these claims with action.

The aftermath of the settlement was quite magical for the match fixers. The media suddenly said 'Story? What story?' The FAI's 'feud' with the club repaired to the extent that it provided Garda Dully with documents he could use in his case against our company. And Messrs. Gavin and Delaney even came to Athlone to open an astro turf pitch for the club, the same pitch which had brought in that E200,000 from the taxpayer.

Our solicitor wrote to the club licencing department of the FAI in March of 2021 (below), asking what was the name of the Athlone club which was awarded a playing licence that year. It was essentially the same letter which had been forwarded to the FAI by A&L Goodbody a little earlier. Remarkably, we have yet to receive a reply to either letter. The question stands, and grows. What is the full name of the Athlone club that was awarded a League of Ireland playing licence in each of the years 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (twice!). Assuming that a second and third club appear in your answers, who owns them and what is in their constitutions?

Speaking in October 2020, the ex-Ireland manager Brian Kerr said ''The 15 years that (John Delaney) was in control were a disaster for Irish football and for the game. What's a disgrace, as much as his behaviour, was that so many people on the inside that knew the skulduggery that was going on, did nothing about it. They said nothing about it and went along with taking the bonuses that were coming from being a part of that culture''.

We've been dealing, for more than a decade now, with people who will make plays on decency and legality in order to get what they want. But they do not care about such things. They only care about what they can get out of it all. They believe they cannot be touched, on account of their proven ability to call in favours from people who are funded by taxpayer money and trusted by the public to look after its interests. Those people include the Gardai, the judiciary and regulators such as the FAI.

The ONLY reason that we have any concrete evidence of their financial ambitions and creative accounting (Documents M and see graphs, 'Follow the Money' - 2/12/22) is not because of any action taken by any of the above, or by anyone in the media. It is because they have released the information themselves. And that has only happened as a tactical play for even larger sums of money. Without showing what they can take out of the club with no blowback from the people of Athlone, investors could not be confident about what they could safely take out of the club.

I think I've done my bit. When all is said and done I am just a farmer, I have other responsibilities. As I see it, it is time for the FAI to come clean. You may not see it that way. Given everything that has gone before, I would be surprised if you did.

The honest have been getting it in the neck for a long time now, but that cannot go on forever. Lies and cover-ups can only go so far, even in this country. I would suggest that you think deeply about where you want to position yourself on this issue. The consequences will be profound.

Yours Sincerely, Declan Molloy