STATEMENT Salisbury City During the last five days I have been trying to negotiate the return of Salisbury City football Club from Mr Outail Touzar the club’s 96 percent majority shareholder. The negotiations, which are documented were conducted through Touzar’s Dubai mobile via the social network site WhatsApp. As you can imagine these negotiations were tiresome and prolonged and extremely painful at times dealing with a man who appears to live on an entirely different planet to the rest of us. Following Mark Winter’s decision to reluctantly stand down the only option left open to us was to convince Touzar to stand down and sign over the shares he paid a £1 for and to date has seen him fail to invest a single penny in the club but withdraw £3,950 without explanation. The deeper we dug into Touzar the more we uncovered a trail of lies, deceit and deception. Needless to say it was imperative to keep him on side to safeguard the future of a club facing an uncertain future under his brief tenure. On Friday if we fail to lodge a £50,000 bond and pay football creditors around £27,000 the Conference will throw Salisbury City out of the League. That will inevitably be followed by a winding up order from the HMRC if we fail to pay an outstanding tax bill for £29,000. In opening negotiations with Touzar I had managed to secure funding to secure the future of the club from three key investors who were prepared to pay off the immediate debts and allow us to rebuild the club following the loss of the manager and key players. Unfortunately Touzar, whose motives seem to perplex many people, had other ideas. Even though he couldn’t raise a single penny, had failed to lift a finger since he took over. He still seemed to think he was sat on a very valuable asset despite the club facing an imminent demise. He tried to gauge the wealth of the three investors and demand proof of funding presumably so he could come up with ludicrous demands to relinquish his hold on the club. Yet even I couldn’t have envisaged what he was going to propose until he put his demands in writing this morning. Touzar wanted £100,000 for 60 percent of the club, to remain as chairman for at least 6 months and 35 percent of any commercial deals he bought into the club. He also wanted 35 percent of any deal that would see the club relocate from their current ground, and wanted Mark Winter, Michaela Menzel and Rae Hughes banned from any involvement in the club. Even more bizarrely given that the lawyers of Prince Khalid had threatened to sue Touzar because he had drawn up a playing contract while the club were under a transfer embargo and accused him of harassing the family for money, he demanded that the player could only sign for Salisbury City if he personally authorised it. Perhaps this will now confirm what many of us know and, others believe to be true, that this man is only driven by personal greed and has no interest in the well-being of the football club. Touzar would have you believe that his intentions were only honourable and the lies and deception are down to others. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions to that. When I replied to Touzar with understandable outrage he accused me of breaching a trust by discussing his offer and claimed it was merely a test. Furthermore this morning he sent out a series of emails to players and staff pleading with them to defer payments they were due while at no point has he made a single sacrifice monetary or other. He even complained that a £20,000 cheque from a passionate disabled fan hand been stopped preventing him from spending someone else’s money. Sadly it seems this is going to reach an inevitable conclusion and the likelihood is Salisbury City will fold. While the passionate fans will understandably be distraught at the prospect, I dare say its owner, Touzar, won’t lose a wink of sleep. We can only assume his only regret is that he couldn’t manage to fleece the club of more money than the £3,950 he managed to get his hands on. When it is more appropriate, we intend to be far more transparent about Touzar’s dealings with Salisbury City. But barring a minor miracle it’s fair to say his brief tenure at the club has been to oversee its complete annihilation. Paul Smith (Salisbury City advisor)
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 22:01:04 +0000
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