All Akcess

James Munro
BBC sports news correspondent

Football is being used as a vehicle for money laundering, according to an international agency responsible for tracking the proceeds of crime.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report warns football is at risk from criminals buying clubs, transferring players, and betting on the sport.

It also provides a rare insight into tax evasion in British football.

The report also raises concerns over human trafficking, corruption, drug trafficking and tax crime in the sport.

The FATF report provides two previously unpublished examples of tax evasion from footballers in the United Kingdom, and suggests that in both cases, the clubs were complicit in the scam.

"Money laundering is a complex crime and one which HMRC is tackling"

HM Revenue and Customs spokeswoman

In one case, according to the report: "A disclosure was made by an international player, revealing that his signing-on fee was disguised as part of a fee to a foreign agent.

"He confirmed that the agent then paid him £300,000 abroad and did not previously disclose this to the UK tax authorities."

The report goes on to suggest: "It is likely that the club concerned was fully aware that the payment to the agent included a signing-on fee for the player and the benefit to the club in such an arrangement is that it avoided social security contributions of £38,000."

In the second case, a club avoided paying tax through the use of image rights.

The report said: "A foreign player entered into an image rights agreement with a club. The player had transferred the rights to exploit his image exclusively on a world-wide basis to a company registered in a known tax haven in return for shares of that company.

"Unlike all the other players at the club, he was the only individual not to have either a signing-on fee or a loyalty bonus and appearance fees.

"The club had not exploited the player’s image in any way and after two years had sought professional advice, only to be advised that the image had no commercially exploitable value.

"Nonetheless, the club renegotiated both the playing and image rights contracts after three years, increasing the level of payments in both.

"The club concerned conceded that the image-rights agreement was part of the employment terms and paid over additional duties of £938,688. Additional duties of £404,480 were also to be paid over the future life of the image-rights contract."

HM Revenue and Customs is understood to have been involved in both cases, but for legal reasons, officials would not comment on either, though the government agency did issue a statement.

"Money laundering is a complex crime and one which HMRC is tackling," said the HMRC spokeswoman.

"We have a very good track record in the field of law enforcement and we take money laundering and tax evasion extremely seriously, focussing significant resources into tackling them.

"Our investigations can and do result in criminal prosecution sending a clear message to anyone tempted to launder money that they are taking a serious risk"

The FATF report provides a series of recommendations for how football can cope with money laundering risks.

One suggestion is that the sport adopts a code of best practices developed by the Football Association, which last year introduced a set of money-laundering guidelines.

It also highlights a risk associated with internet gambling, and suggests that the issue could be investigated in a separate FATF study.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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By Mike Wooldridge
World affairs correspondent, BBC News

A United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is to begin.

It is headed by Chile’s ambassador to the UN, Heraldo Munoz, and includes a former Indonesian attorney general and a former senior Irish police officer.

The inquiry will last six months and investigate the "facts and circumstances" of Ms Bhutto’s killing.

She was killed in December 2007 as she left a rally of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) supporters in Rawalpindi.

These are challenging times in Pakistan to carry out such an investigation, not least because the Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, accused by the last government here of being behind the assassination, is the target of a two-month-old military offensive and his militant network has hit back with retaliatory suicide attacks.

Mehsud has denied having anything to do with Ms Bhutto’s killing.

‘Rogue elements’

Her assassination left questions unresolved for many people here, but especially her own party, which is now in government.

After she had narrowly escaped a double suicide bombing on the day of her arrival back in Pakistan from self-imposed exile in October 2007, she accused what she called "enemies" and "rogue elements" in the then-government led by President Pervez Musharraf and in the intelligence agencies of plotting to kill her.

The UN inquiry cannot itself launch criminal proceedings, but can apparently apportion blame if it chooses to do so.

Officials say the inquiry will work "fairly discreetly".

Security is clearly an issue, and they say they do not want to compromise the investigation in any way.

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The cost of sending text messages from your mobile phone when you are overseas in the European Union has come down.

The maximum charge for sending a text is now 11 euro cents ($0.15; 9.4p) plus sales tax.

It is the first time that text charges have been capped. The previous EU average was 28 cents.

The price of making a call is capped at 43 cents a minute, down from 46 cents, while the price of receiving a call is capped at 19 cents, down from 22 cents.

"The roaming-rip off is now coming to an end," said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding.

The cost of transferring a megabyte of data is capped at one euro.

Also, mobile operators have been forced to charge for calls by the second after the first half minute, instead of rounding up to the nearest minute.

Many mobile operators have fought against the new caps, which are expected to significantly reduce their profits from roaming charges.

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A new law has come into effect in Russia, confining gambling to four regions far from the capital Moscow.

It bans gambling on the internet and at airports, supermarkets and other sites.

But critics say the move will leave more than 300,000 people without jobs and push the industry underground, amid a continuing economic crisis in Russia.

The law was passed by Russian lawmakers in 2006 and was the initiative of the then President Vladimir Putin, who is now serving as prime minister.

‘Unrealistic idea’

From 1 July, Russian gamblers are restricted to specific zones in the Kaliningrad region by the Baltic Sea, the Primorye region in the Far East, Altai in Siberia and an area in the south spanning the Rostov and Krasnodar regions.

"Let them close. For that matter, get them out of Russia altogether"

Galina Beleznikova, pensioner

The dedicated gambling zones require massive investment, and critics argue that they are far from ready.

"This is a dead unrealistic idea," Samuel Binder, deputy executive director at the Russian Association for Gaming Business Development, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

"It’s preposterous to think these replacements could be up and running soon… Even those who have investments for gaming have realised they’d rather take their money elsewhere in the ex-Soviet Union or to Latin America," Mr Binder said.

Casinos and slot machines spread across Russia after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

In Moscow alone, there were more than 500 legal casinos and gaming halls.

Police have been patrolling the streets in the capital to ensure the doors are firmly shut.

The spread of casinos has provoked distaste among many Russians, especially the older and poorer generation.

"Let them close. For that matter, get them out of Russia altogether," Galina Beleznikova, aged 65, told the Associated Press.

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By Jill Mcgivering
BBC News, Islamabad

A senior UN official has made an urgent plea for more money to support the displaced in north-west Pakistan.

About two million people have fled their homes to escape fighting between the army and militants.

Louis Georges Arsenault of the UN children’s fund told the BBC it was the biggest internally displaced population since the Rwanda crisis in 1994.

Unicef wants Pakistan to provide the refugees with basic services – water, power, schools and health services.

Pakistan has urged refugees to return home, saying it is safe to do so.

While some refugees have returned, Unicef wants the government to give people written guarantees of their safety.

Mr Arsenault, who is Unicef’s head of global emergencies, said the situation was dire, not only for the families who fled their homes but also for communities struggling to support them.

Hundreds of thousands of people are living in camps which are now overflowing but they represent a small fraction of the problem in Pakistan.

More than 80% of the displaced are far less visible, dependent on local hosts.

Some communities have doubled or tripled in size. Local homes are bursting and resources depleted.

Mr Arsenault said school buildings were now being used to house people with nowhere else to go.

Almost 4,000 schools have become camps, increasing by about 200 schools a week.

He said pressure was growing with monsoon rains and the planting season both about to start.

"If they [the displaced people] are not able to go back for the agriculture season they are going to miss the year and that is a critical factor," Mr Arsenault said.

Some people have returned but many say they are still not convinced the fighting is over.

Unicef has called on the government to give formal written guarantees of safety. It also wants basic services restored.

That needs a massive investment which so far foreign governments have been slow to make.

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A North Korean ship being tracked by the United States Navy on suspicion of transporting weapons to Burma has turned around, US officials have said.

They said they did not know where the ship was now heading, but South Korean media said it was going home.

The UN passed a tough sanctions resolution, Number 1874, allowing for inspections of air, ship and land shipments in and out of North Korea.

The resolution followed North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests in May.

The Kang Nam 1 ship set sail from North Korea on 17 June and appeared to be bound for Burma, as US ships followed it down the coast of China.

Sanctions working

It is the first vessel monitored under sanctions that ban the regime from selling arms and nuclear-related material.

It has been described as a known weapons trader. Burma denied any connection with it.

After sailing southwards past China, the Kong Nam apparently turned around and headed back up north.

One official said it was just south of Hong Kong on Tuesday. Others noted it had started travelling very slowly, perhaps to conserve fuel.

"We’ve no idea where it’s going," the official said. "The US didn’t do anything to make it turn around."

The UN resolution allows the international community to ask for permission to board and search any suspect ship. Authorities can ask for an inspection wherever the ship pulls into port.

"If the ship is on its way back, it would mean that Resolution 1874 is taking effect and causing the North to retreat," defence analyst Kim Tae-woo told the Korea Herald newspaper.

The US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, has confirmed that the US was "pursuing and following the progress of that ship very closely."

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