Crewe Alex have dropped their legal claim against majority shareholder Norman Hassall. The claim, amounting to £390,988, plus another £10,000 in legal costs, had been lodged on the 12th December 2017. It was later withdrawn on the 24th May 2018.
Director Jimmy Rowlinson had revealed earlier this year that the board were taking legal action against Hassall in a bid to recover money he had ‘taken out of the club’.
The first part of the claim, for £100,989, was dated back to an agreement from August 7, 2006, which is believed to be related to the £1.325m Hassall loaned from the club that same year.
The remaining £290,000 was alleged to have been taken between April 2014 and September 2016 and is shown in accounts on Companies House as being moved from the football club’s parent company, Commercial Enterprises (Crewe) Limited, to Gresty Holdings (Crewe) Limited, a company which is under the control of Hassall. Fans will now be left asking whether or not the money in question is still considered to be ‘owed’ to the club.
Whilst the move appears to be a victory for the Nantwich based accountant, it is unlikely to have been done without conditions in place. Have the club dropped the lawsuit on the proviso that Hassall finds an exit strategy? Neither party will have wanted a messy, expensive legal battle, and privately, the directors will admit they were not expecting the case to reach court anyway. Ultimately, the lawsuit was brought to help push Hassall through the exit door.
As documented before though, it is a more complex situation than Hassall just selling up once the price is right. The fate of his shareholding is intertwined with the outcome of a legal battle involving his other company, European Brand Trading (EBT). He is still contesting a HMRC seized shipment of wine from 2009, with a further appeal set to be heard next week.
Unfortunately for Crewe’s majority shareholder, it appears his liabilites do not end there. Hassall, who owns a holiday home in the south of Spain, also had a company there named Icespana which was set up in the early 2000’s. Their operations were similiar to that of EBT, and dealt mainly with importing and exporting wholesale goods.
By now, it should not surprise you to read that the company went bust in 2007. I found documents readily available online detailing how a Malaga judge had, in November 2017, condemned Hassall and his business parters to, ‘face the responsbilities they have with creditors using 100% of their personal assets’ relating to the liquidation of the company. How much is owed to creditors has not been released but the figure will likely add to the list of liabilities that Hassall will be required to meet.
It also transpired that one of Hassall’s partners in Icespana, a Neil William Hay, had shot to prominence for other reasons in 2015 when, as an SNP election candidate, he was found to have set up a fake Twitter profile to post offensive messages about anti-independance campaigners and the elderly. There was a further furore after it also emerged he included a company on his CV which specialises in helping people avoid tax.
It never rains but it pours.
Despite Hassall’s 40-year-long association with Crewe Alex, Rowlinson said at the fans forum in February, ‘I personally don’t feel he has any genuine interest in the football club anymore. I think it is despicable that we have a major shareholder of a football club not putting any money in and supporting the club at all’.
It is widely known that Hassall has been looking to sell his shares in Crewe for some time. Back in 2006, he made no secret of his intention to sell up, even advertising a controlling interest in The Times newspaper, valuing the club at ‘circa £8m’ and asking for ‘sophisticated investors only’.
12 years on, a price is still to be agreed and there is only one man holding all the cards.
The board have largely kept their own cards close to their chest where Hassall is concerned and whether this latest development is just more jostling for position still remains to be seen. It was the outspoken Rowlinson who said in 2016, ‘the club cannot move forward until it gets square with Norman Hassall’.
And so it continues….
Crewe Alexandra