Haringey News

Tottenham Hotspur boss Harry Redknapp: 'deals put home at risk'

By Court Reporter

5:15pm Friday 27th January 2012

Spurs manager Harry Redknapp has told police his home was at risk after he lost millions of pounds in disastrous investments, a court has heard.

The former Portsmouth FC boss urged detectives to ask his solicitor if he had "ever come across anyone as bad, businesswise".

He said he lost £6 million in a property venture in Southsea, Hampshire, and had squandered £250,000 to help his friend, Jim Smith, keep his managerial job at Oxford United.

Redknapp - tipped as a future England boss - also said he had paid £1 million in tax in 2008, before adding: "We are givers not takers."

During interviews with City of London police, Redknapp said: "I am not a tax fiddler, I am not any kind of tax fiddler, never have been in my life."

In transcripts read out at Southwark Crown Court, Redknapp said he had paid £8.5 million on property in Southsea. He said he had a chance to share the investment with a Samir Khan, described as a business associate of former England goalkeeper David James.

Redknapp told officers: "I've signed a form that says he's half in, and he ain't put no money in, and I've signed the forms now, you can ask my solicitor in Bournemouth, and they can't believe that I didn't read anything.

He added: "He put half in what I put in up to that point and my own money was about two hundred grand, now he's in for nothing and he has half the profit ... that's how useless I am with things, and you can check with my solicitor if you like."

Both Redknapp, 64, of Poole, Dorset, and Milan Mandaric, from Oadby, Leicestershire, deny two counts of cheating the public revenue when Redknapp was manager of Portsmouth Football Club.

Jurors were sent home to return on Monday, when they will hear final prosecution submissions before Mandaric's barrister Lord Ken Macdonald QC opens the defence. The trial continues.

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