Always Managing: My Autobiography (3 page)

My solicitor, Mark Spragg, called for an inquiry into how the
Sun
newspaper came to be in on the search, too. One officer had made about ten late-night phone calls to the paper on the eve of the raid. The internal police investigation accepted his explanation. He was calling to issue invites to the Christmas party because he’d got a lot of friends there.

At first, I was just being interviewed by police officers. Then the tax men from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs got involved. And although the investigation started off being about Amdy Faye, the fact I had mentioned the bank account in Monaco to Quest and the police gave HMRC an excuse to go after me. I always wondered whether pursuing the police over that illegal raid counted against me, whether when the police lost that case they became desperate to get their own back because, out of the blue, the bank account in Monaco became important and Amdy’s £100,000 was forgotten. Peter and Milan were charged over it, but not me, although the police now wouldn’t let their additional case against me go. These were strange times all around, and somebody close to Portsmouth was certainly out to make mischief for me because, in addition to the bad publicity surrounding the HMRC investigation, two
stolen letters were being touted around newspapers to place an even greater stain against my character.

I’ve got my suspicions over who the spiteful informant was, but I will never know for sure. The first stolen letter concerned the Quest investigation. It was Milan’s reply to Quest, explaining the story behind the Monaco bank account. The second was a disciplinary letter concerning a row I had with Milan during my time at Portsmouth. It was a fuss about nothing, ancient history – not least because by then I had moved from Portsmouth to Tottenham – but it showed that somebody was trying to blacken my name.

A telephone call from the editor of the
Sun
alerted me to it. He said that the newspaper had been offered a letter sent by Milan during our time at Portsmouth, threatening to sack me if I spoke to him in a disrespectful manner again. The source wanted payment because the letter was detailed and said that I had sworn at Milan a number of times in the course of our argument. It’s true, I had. I remember the row very clearly. It was early in the season, 2003– 04, one Friday night before a match against Manchester City. We were having dinner and I was telling Milan about a player I had been to watch in Italy, a left-back. He looked fantastic and was coming out of contract. Milan said, ‘Harry, he’s not a left-back, he’s a centre-half.’

I said, ‘I went to watch him last week, Milan. He’s a left-back. What makes you think he’s a centre-half?’

Milan replied that Peter Storrie said he was a centre-half.

I turned to Peter, who was sitting with us. ‘How do you know he’s a centre-half?’ I asked, by now getting quite angry. ‘I watched him play left-back. He’s a left-back.’

‘Well, my stepson checked it online,’ Peter explained, ‘and they’ve got him down as centre-half.’

That was it. I went at the pair of them. ‘Well, why don’t we make your stepson the fucking chief scout?’ I raged. I then turned on Milan. ‘What fucking chance have I got here with you lot?’

I didn’t stop there. I gave him a lot of grief, using some very colourful language, going on and on. It turned into a proper row.

The next day at City, Milan wouldn’t even talk to me. I went up to the directors’ box to watch the first half, sat next to him, and he moved up one seat he was that upset. Every time I tried to say something he turned his back. We should have won the match, but drew. The mood was tense. Then we got a big win over Bolton Wanderers, 4–0, to go top of the league, with Sheringham on form again. Now Milan wanted us to be friends once more. The problem was, he’d already sent the letter, warning me over the language I used towards him in Manchester. And so a copy of it sat in his drawer, meaningless, until somebody got hold of it and tried to sell it to the
Sun
for £10,000 six years later.

The editor said they had no intention of buying the letter, or publishing it, but he wanted to warn me that someone was trying to trip me up. The next weekend, that person succeeded. I received a call from Rob Beasley, a reporter at the
News of the World
. It was the eve of the 2009 Carling Cup final, Tottenham versus Manchester United, and he had the letter Milan had sent to Quest about the bank account in Monaco.

It had been taken, obviously, from a file at Portsmouth. Beasley admitted paying an informant £1,000. The seller had clearly lowered his price after getting no joy from the
Sun
first
time. I cannot think the two calls were a coincidence. It is too far-fetched that a pair of confidential letters go missing, and both end up with newspapers in the same week. Beasley started by asking me questions about the bank account. I’ll admit, I just wanted to get rid of him. He was trying to ruin my preparations for a huge match with Tottenham and I certainly didn’t think he deserved to hear every last private detail. We ended up arguing and the paper printed the story anyway. Considering the letters were stolen it seems remarkable to me that the
News of the World
investigation would play such a large part in HMRC’s prosecution case, and that Beasley would be a key witness. Nobody seemed to worry about the theft, just about my bank account.

And, yes, I know some people think it was all an act, me being a mug with money. I know they see the wealth I have accrued from football, my nice house on the south coast, and assume I must know every trick in the book. But it isn’t like that. I’m not smart with money; in fact, I wish half of the things I have read
were
true. I had an account in Monaco, but I couldn’t remember the name of the bank. When I came across Mr Cusdin’s name in my mobile telephone a year or so later, I couldn’t even recall who he was. I didn’t even notice that the transfer bonus portion of my contract at Portsmouth had changed. When HMRC were going through my personal finances with a fine-tooth comb, and we needed to account for every penny, I received a call from my accountant.

‘What are you doing with your
Sun
money?’ he asked. I didn’t know what he meant. ‘Your money from the
Sun
newspaper, for your column,’ he explained. ‘Where is it, what have you been doing with it?’ I said it would be in the bank. He said it wasn’t. So
we contacted the
Sun
, and it turned out they hadn’t paid me for eighteen months. I didn’t know.

Obviously, football managers are well paid, and not having to think about money doesn’t really help a man like me. I go to a hole in the wall, I’ve got a number memorised somewhere, I get £150 out, put it in my pocket and I’m happy. As long as I’ve got £150, I never worry. As for the rest, I’m hopeless. I’m not proud of that – I’m ashamed, really. Sandra does everything, and she was a hairdresser as a young girl not the head of Barclays Bank. Neither of us are really the smartest, financially. For years, my accountant ran my life. He had complete control and I was totally reliant on him, which was not a healthy situation. Now my old secretary from my days at Bournemouth, Jenny, comes around and helps Sandra pay the bills or sorts out a few letters. As for me, I’m nothing to do with any of it. Sandra hides our bank statements most of the time. We’re paying for the grandkids to do this and that, we put some of them through school, and I don’t know the half of it. When a bill comes in that I might not like, Sandra probably pays it, then tears it up. What Harry doesn’t know won’t hurt him – that seems to be the policy.

My dad wouldn’t have been any different. I think a lot of people, a lot of old East Enders certainly, didn’t go in for anything too complex. My mum kept what she had, which wasn’t a lot – a couple of little rings, maybe – in a tin on the balcony of their old block of flats in Stepney. Any money they had between them went in a biscuit barrel. They didn’t have a bank account; they didn’t go to the bank, they paid their bills in cash and that was how it was. Maybe I haven’t moved on enough from that world. Until earlier this year, I still had the same old Nokia phone. I don’t send
emails, I can’t work computers. Every year I insist I’m going to get a smart phone or a laptop. Then another year goes by, and I’ve done nothing.

The phone call to tell me I would be charged came from my barrister, Mr Kelsey-Fry. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he began, and I knew. I felt sick, but he sounded absolutely furious. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he kept repeating. ‘I’ve read it and it’s scandalous. This is not right. This should not be going to court.’ I was just in a mess. ‘I’m going to be dragged through the mud every day,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know if I can handle it. Every day in the papers, on the television, my grandkids seeing this.’ He told me I had to handle it, that I had to stay strong, but it definitely had an effect on my health. I don’t think it is a coincidence that I needed to have minor heart surgery around the time the case was due to be heard. They called it a procedure, not even an operation, but the stress was clearly taking its toll. We kept thinking the Crown Prosecution Service would pull the case and it wouldn’t go the distance, but then the day came and I was walking into Southwark Crown Court. Being on the witness stand was the most traumatic experience of my life.

I tried to remain upbeat, but look back and laugh? It will be a long time before I feel able to do that. The only moment of light relief across the whole fifteen days came before the trial got underway. I’d never been in court before, so I did not know the whole process of picking the jury. A large pool of jurors enters the court and are sworn in; then twelve are picked at random by computer. They all stand as the names are called out. Number one juror takes his seat, then number two. We got to number six and this gentleman was announced as Peter Crouch. He was 6 feet
6 inches and skinny – it could actually have been Crouchy! Everyone in the courtroom started laughing, but there was nothing anyone could do: the computer had spoken and Peter Crouch was on the jury. The rest of the jurors were sworn in and we broke for lunch, ready to start the case that afternoon. You couldn’t make it up. But this alternate Peter Crouch never got to play his part in our trial because a reporter from the
Guardian
was so excited with his involvement that he put the news on Twitter. For obvious reasons, jurors cannot be named publicly, but Crouch’s details were in the public domain, with the added information that he used to work for Tottenham! So when everyone returned they informed the judge, he had a think about it and concluded the only way forward was for a new jury to be selected. So that was the end of Peter Crouch.

They tried to get me in the back way to court every day, tried to get me down the stairs and away at night without too many people seeing me, but it was still as frightening as hell. I can remember watching Milan on the witness stand, and he was so clever, so confident and quick-witted. The prosecuting QC, John Black, alleged that Milan had only got me to go over to Monaco so that he could pay me offshore and save the tax. ‘Yes, Mr Black,’ Milan replied. ‘I paid £100 million in income tax up to that period but, I remember it now, I woke up that morning and thought, “Milan, your life is boring, have a bit of excitement today, get Harry involved, do something wrong, break the law. You can save £12,000 in income tax. Send Harry to Monaco, open an account, tell him you’re going to break the law together and have some fun.” I have paid £9 million in income tax this past year, £100 million in my life,
I have employed 40,000 people, but this day, this wonderful day, I decided to break the law over £12,000. And that’s what I said to Harry: “If we end up in court, what does it matter?”’

It was brilliant, listening to him. I could see the girls in the jury laughing. They loved him. Milan can be very charming when he wants to be. He came over as a class act and that was fantastic for us.

When it was my turn, I felt totally different. I’m not Milan. I’m not at ease in public situations like that. And I haven’t got the brains of the guys asking the questions, either. To make it worse, Detective Inspector David Manley, the policeman who headed up the four-year investigation, came into the court to watch me in the witness box. It was the only time we saw him. He sat directly in front of me, in the line of vision between myself and Mr Black. He was looking at me and through me at the same time, with a glare on his face. It was a scary look and it unnerved me, to be honest. As I was looking over to answer Black, my eyes were drawn to Manley, and then I couldn’t even remember what Black had asked me. My mind kept going blank. His presence made it much harder for me.

People think I must hate the police after my experience, but I don’t. The desk sergeant at the local station where I went to be interviewed was always as good as gold with me. He was a Newcastle United fan, a big, tall, intimidating man, but he couldn’t have been nicer. Manley was different. I felt he was driving the case against me all the time, even when others might have seemed uncertain, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still seething over my complaint about the raid at our house. It was a strange experience being in court with people who were trying to put you away. I would get in a lift and there would be a couple of the
policeman who were lined up against me, and we would rise in silence to the same room on the same floor. Then they would sit thirty yards from me, staring. When I left to go downstairs at the end of the day, they were walking beside me in the same direction. Some people compared it to the two teams in a football match, the opposing sides – but when the final whistle blows on a Saturday you all go off and have a drink together. This was different; it felt very weird. No football manager has ever tried to put me in prison – and that was Manley’s aim. Milan went and shook hands with him at the end, but I couldn’t. Even now, I try to be very careful about my driving speed.

I can hardly bear to recall how desolate it felt on the witness stand at times. I stood there being questioned over two days by a man who had probably been to Eton, or some wonderful university, and would be a million times more educated than me. I’m sure John Black is a nice guy and I know he had a job to do, but he was questioning me and it felt very intimidating because, obviously, I knew he was on another level intellectually. And I just had to stand up there and do my best, knowing that one wrong word, one lapse of memory or mental blank, could put me away. That is the scariest thing. I had John Kelsey-Fry on my side and he helped, but it was still a hellish, nerve-racking experience.