By Andrew Warshaw
May 3 – Birmingham City owner Carson Yeung failed in his final bid to avoid facing money laundering charges today – then heard the prosecution claim that huge amounts of cash had gone through the ex-hairdresser’s bank accounts.
The Hong Hong-based businessman is accused of illicitly laundering more than HK$720m (£59.72m) through bank accounts controlled by himself and his father but has denied five charges which prosecutors said occurred between 2001 and 2007.
In 2009 Yeung won a takeover battle for Birmingham, paying £81.5m. But prosecutor John Reading said that over seven years previously, 437 cash deposits totalling HK$97.5m, were made from a Macau casino operator, securities firms and “unknown parties without any apparent reason”.
The amount involved was more than 300 times the father and son’s combined reported income of HK$2.2m from 1996 to 2006, the court was told.
Yeung was arrested in June 2011 and trading in Birmingham International Holdings, the parent company of Birmingham City FC, has been suspended ever since.
Although stockbrokers aren’t required to keep records for more than seven years and Yeung’s legal team argued the lack of documents proving how Yeung acquired his wealth would make a fair trial impossible, Judge Douglas Yau rejected a request to throw the case out.
Yeung was chairman of Grandtop International Holdings Ltd., which in 2007 bought a 29.9% stake in Birmingham for £15m. He bought the rest of the club in 2009, paying £81.5m to David and Ralph Gold and David Sullivan, and Grandtop changed its name to Birmingham International Holdings Ltd.
Before his takeover of Birmingham, Yeung was a little-known businessman whose only previous experience with professional football consisted of a stint as chairman of Hong Kong Rangers Football Club from 2005-06.
Birmingham City won the 2011 League Cup, ending 48 years without a major trophy, but despite the victory were relegated from the Premier League the same year.
The trial continues.
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