And so it goes on ( Sala )

[RonnieBird]

I still have doubts whether Sala's registration had been legally transferred from Nantes to Cardiff at the time of the crash.

I don't think his eligibility to play in the Premier League or not is the issue (he could be a Cardiff player and still ineligible on various technicalities) but despite all the reports and threads on this I still don't know if the transfer was properly completed. The club's position that the contract documentation was invalid - and that it would have been revised and re-signed after Sala's return to Cardiff to deal with the contract anomalies - sounds plausible to me. That was not considered by FIFA and is the basis of the appeal to CIS.

The role of the McKays (still at the time acting for Nantes) in arranging the flight is a separate reason for disputing the FIFA judgement.

I find myself agreeing with you !
Under French law he remains their employee until they have paid him all monies owed.

They claim that they somehow decided at 9.15 pm - shortly before his death - to issue a cheque in respect of this sum.

However it seems implausible that someone was in personnel at Nantes FC signing cheques at that time of the evening , and it is impossible to explain why they would have made the cheque to his family rather than him at a time when he wasn't dead and no one had any reason to suspect that he might be.

The suggestion , of course, is that they falsely backdated this cheque to make it appear that he was no longer an employee of Nantes FC, and had ceased to be shortly before his unexpected and unfortunate death.

[cardiff55]

This story has a long way to run I think. Sala would have appeared to be City player, even if the paperwork was incorrect. That could have been sorted out when he arrived in Cardiff.

As said by someone above, they money is accounted for. That doesn't mean it is sat in an account somewhere, just that City's accounts have mad a provision for it. I think it's an overstatement to say City will go bust because of it. We paid for Madine, and the agent fees, signing on fees and two years worth of wages too, and may have even had to pay him off. That accounts for a lot more than the transfer fee of a reported £6m. The club is still around.

It is right for the club to fight the case and not simply hand over the money. It could cost a lot but the club may win. If they lose I reckon the club will go after the other people involved, we know who they are. We were supposedly paying £15m for a player valued at £6m six months before, various third parties were involved in the deal and where was all the money going? How much were Nantes due to receive for the player, not the £15m quoted I suspect. Maybe half of it with rest going to the third parties. The same people who arranged the flight that ended up in his death. And we surprisingly had the two McKay brothers on our books at the time, players who have done not a lot in the game. We also have not paid out in wages/NI etc for the two years , but conversely do not have an asset we can sell on, even at a reduced amount.

I think will be lots of twists and turns over the next couple of years on this one.

And the club fighting Isaacs and Hammam in court too at the moment. How much more does Hammam want our club to bleed for him?

[RonnieBird]

This story has a long way to run I think. Sala would have appeared to be City player, even if the paperwork was incorrect. That could have been sorted out when he arrived in Cardiff.

As said by someone above, they money is accounted for. That doesn't mean it is sat in an account somewhere, just that City's accounts have mad a provision for it. I think it's an overstatement to say City will go bust because of it. We paid for Madine, and the agent fees, signing on fees and two years worth of wages too, and may have even had to pay him off. That accounts for a lot more than the transfer fee of a reported £6m. The club is still around.

It is right for the club to fight the case and not simply hand over the money. It could cost a lot but the club may win. If they lose I reckon the club will go after the other people involved, we know who they are. We were supposedly paying £15m for a player valued at £6m six months before, various third parties were involved in the deal and where was all the money going? How much were Nantes due to receive for the player, not the £15m quoted I suspect. Maybe half of it with rest going to the third parties. The same people who arranged the flight that ended up in his death. And we surprisingly had the two McKay brothers on our books at the time, players who have done not a lot in the game. We also have not paid out in wages/NI etc for the two years , but conversely do not have an asset we can sell on, even at a reduced amount.

I think will be lots of twists and turns over the next couple of years on this one.

And the club fighting Isaacs and Hammam in court too at the moment. How much more does Hammam want our club to bleed for him?

"This story has a long way to run I think. Sala would have appeared to be City player, even if the paperwork was incorrect. That could have been sorted out when he arrived in Cardiff.


Unfortunately, what appeared to be the case and what could have happened is beside the point.
What counts is what actually was the the position at the time of the death.
In French ,(Roman) law, such matters are taken very literally indeed and there is less room for interpretation than might be the case in this country.
If by this literal interpretation they still owed him salary at the time of his death , he was still their employee and, by extension, the transfer had not been completed. Now, if that completion had not taken place at the time of his death , it was obviously no longer capable of being completed and therefore null and void.

That's one thing, and is compellng evidence that the debt cannot exist and therefore cannot be enforced.

More dramatically , if it can be proven to the satisfaction of the Examining Magistrates that Nantes FC deliberately concealed this situation by presenting a cheque with a falsified date and time , then it becomes quite a serious matter of criminal fraud.