LOL David Conn is a Man City fan; no irony (or agendas) there at all. And here's Marcotti's riposte in full : My colleague, Matthew Syed, wrote about Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, yesterday in The Times and, predictably, attracted plenty of attention. Matthew is annoyed that not enough is made of the origins of Abramovich's fortune. He quotes Abramovich's own lawyer, Jonathan Sumption QC, describing in court how, some 20 years ago, the Chelsea owner gained control of state-owned companies in an auction that was "easy to rig and was in fact rigged." He calls the "rehabilitation of Abramovich... one of the most sordid episodes in recent sporting history" and expresses surprise that commentators dont "offer a word" about where his money comes from. I presume here he refers to football commentators (though I'm not sure Sky's Martin Tyler ought to be discussing early 90s Russian history the next time Chelsea play Arsenal on TV), because, in fact, the story of Abramovich's first big break with Sibneft, the Russian oil group which was taken over by Gazprom, is well known. You can draw your own conclusion about Matthews arguments and whether they hold water, particularly when he deconstructs the reaction of Chelsea fans. Some, he says, "regret the identity of the owner" while others point to the fact that other owners also have dubious histories. There are those who still say that football is a form of escapism and they don't want to think about politics while they enjoy their weekly dose of Eden Hazard and Diego Costa. These are the folks who annoy him the most because, Matthew says, they reflect the idea that "football is subject to a different set of rules to everything else." But, thats where hes wrong. The rules really aren't that different elsewhere. There are folks who push the boundaries as far as they can. If they're caught and they can be prosecuted, they are prosecuted. If they cant, its remarked upon, but either way we still do business with them. My bank - one of the biggest British banks - agreed to pay some £1.2 billion in fines in 2012 because it helped bad guys to launder money. Indeed, a US senate investigation said, according to the BBC, that it had been a conduit for "drug kingpins and rogue nations." The company is still here. It still does business. Its top executives are still paid handsomely. And yet the money it helped to launder might - for all we know - have funded a terrorist cell or helped a crazed drug overlord assemble a phalanx of gun-toting *********. Or how about BP? You want to discuss its environmental record? In 2005, one of its refineries exploded, killing 15 workers and injuring another 180. The company was fined, over the years, some £120 million. In 2006, one of its pipelines leaked oil in Alaska: in this case, the total fine was some £28 million. Then came the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. According to Forbes, theyve paid out some £22 billion, but, from what I can make out, there's more to come. I could cite others, but I think you get the picture. In both cases the companies were accused of doing something many would find morally reprehensible - laundering money and not meeting safety standards - in the pursuit of profit. And somebody - mostly shareholders and top executives - did profit from this malfeasance. Why are they still allowed to operate? Because - consciously or not - we run our own cost-benefit analysis. We - or, at least a majority of those in power - figure that its in our interest to keep them around because they contribute more than they take. They pay loads in taxes and employ hundreds of thousands of people so we dont mind that some of their money may have been ill-begotten at some point in the past. What would happen if we tried to forensically track down the source of everyone's wealth? We - as in Western Europeans - would probably not enjoy our findings, given the way colonialism, imperialism and assorted other "isms" for centuries raped much of the rest of the planet. This isn't to say that everyone who makes money should be viewed with suspicion. Many achieve wealth through ingenuity and creativity. And they genuinely do add value to society, because contrary to what some believe progress is not a zero-sum game. But some push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour or bend the rules. And we tend not to feel the need to remind ourselves of the fact every few minutes. At least as long as we believe that the good they do outweighs the bad. That's why most people are less fussed about Abramovich than Matthew is. And its not because football "is subject to a different set of rules". In fact, its quite the opposite. Its because football is no different in that sense than the rest of society.
