Hasselbaink: Come up with a nice figure...
QPR boss agreed to consider signing player after negotiating £55,000 fee for Singapore speech
JIMMY Floyd Hasselbaink, the Queens Park Rangers manager, negotiated a fee of £55,000 to act as an ambassador for a sports company that proposed selling players to his club, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The former Chelsea striker agreed to fly to Singapore to speak to investors in a Far Eastern firm that was seeking to be involved in the transfer of players. He told undercover reporters posing as representatives of the firm: “Look, just try to make me happy… come up with a nice figure.”
It comes after the Telegraph disclosed that the England manager Sam Allardyce negotiated a £400,000 per year deal to represent the same company, which in reality was a fictitious firm whose representatives were undercover reporters.
Hasselbaink, 44, held two meetings with an undercover reporter at which he discussed meeting investors in the company and potentially signing players they represented. He was told the Far East firm wanted to become involved in the transfer of players.
But the Championship manager saw that as no barrier to working with the firm, and was open to the idea of signing players they represented, despite the apparent conflict of interest with his job at QPR. He would potentially have been spending his club’s money on players represented by a company that was paying him.
During a low-key meeting with an undercover reporter and the soccer agent Scott McGarvey at a branch of Pret a Manger in west London on August 25, Hasselbaink discussed terms as he sipped a cup of green tea.
McGarvey told him: “I can go anywhere I want, travel the world and sign some good young players… I want to bring you a player, it’s got to be right, everything’s gonna be done properly and it’s got to be looked after properly, and you’ve got no headache.”
The agent said the undercover reporter representing the fictitious Far East firm was “going to be an integral part of this, with me”, adding: “I’ve got a list of players I’d like to talk to you about. You don’t want a centre forward, do you?” Hasselbaink replied that he did need a centre forward, as well as players in other positions.
Then the conversation turned to the “business” of Hasselbaink flying to Singapore to deliver a talk to investors in the firm. The Dutchman said: “You said the word business. That’s all, it’s business, so it depends what you put down, you know… at the end of the day, it has to be worthwhile to go all [that] way…”
On Sept 7 he met the reporter and Mr McGarvey – who was not aware of the reporter’s true identity – at The Botanist bar in Sloane Square, west London. After a discussion about how many days he would need to be away from the UK on each trip to Singapore, he said: “It depends what the cheque says, you know? It just depends what has to be done, but if it’s an international week, I can give them Sunday, Monday, Tuesday off.”
He was offered £35,000-£40,000 per trip and replied: “I think you have to do better than that… Look, just try to make me happy. Cos you come up with a nice figure, you know. The 35 is… you know?”
Asked if £50,000-£55,000 would be acceptable, he said: “You’re getting warmer. I think, for me to do a good job and also be comfortable, OK I’m going to be three days away, that kind of stuff and, you know international week is also the time when I do spend a lot of time with the family.
“It also depends whether I can be paid in Holland? If I do work abroad I can receive money abroad, and if I do work here then I have to receive it here, and I have to pay tax here. If I do work abroad and receive it abroad, in my bank account in Holland, then if I bring it back here I have a way of only paying between 10 and 15 per cent [tax], instead of paying 45 [per cent]. Because it makes a big difference.”
Told it would not be a problem to pay him in the Netherlands, he said: “Well, that makes it a little bit easier. Then 55 is not bad.” The reporter said: “And obviously anything that you would be able to have a look at other aspects of our business favourably that would be appreciated.”
Hasselbaink, who had been told the fictitious firm had interests in construction and property as well as sport, replied: “I didn’t have the time yet but I’m going to Google you.”
Mr McGarvey chipped in: “What we’re trying to do is build a relationship with you, going forward… we’ll give you a player as well.”
Hasselbaink said: “Give me a ----ing player. A good player.”
The discussion moved on to a football scout Hasselbaink knew in the Netherlands who spotted talented teenagers. The QPR boss said: “You need clubs, though. If you own a club then it’s easier to move the player.”
He said to the scout: “He’s now like him [pointing to Mr McGarvey], on the wrong side. You know. The dodgy side. So yeah, so I help him out a little bit.”
Hasselbaink, twice leading scorer in the Premier League, started his managerial career at Royal Antwerp in Belgium in 2013, before he took over at Burton Albion, winning promotion to League One, then moved to QPR in December 2015. A spokesman for Mr McGarvey said: “Your reporters raised the prospect of well-known football managers travelling to the Far East for the purpose of making speeches to audiences who would comprise clients and connections to the investment business. Our client understood that you saw the value of such individuals attending for that purpose, given the profile and brand of English football in the Far East.
“Our client did recognise that a benefit to such engagements could be the development of personal connections with such managers which may assist in the environment where knowledge, professional opinion and networks have real value.
“There was no suggestion that engaging such managers on these terms was a way of rewarding managers in circumstances where it would be improper for them to be so rewarded.”
Mr Hasselbaink said there was nothing unusual about agreeing to make a speech and denied any wrongdoing. Last night QPR said it was starting an internal investigation into the matter but added: “We have every confidence in our manager”.
Damian Collins, of the Commons culture and sport committee, said the practice of a manager taking money from a firm involved in player transfers was “a clear conflict of interest”.