Harry Redknapp has been cleared of tax evasion charges in a unanimous jury verdict following a three-week trial focusing on the Tottenham Hotspur manager’s offshore accounts in Monaco. While the prosecution focused on Redknapp’s claims to media that the payments of £189,000 that were placed, untaxed, into this account by then-Portsmouth owner Milan Mandaric as a bonus for the sale of Peter Crouch, the defence claimed that the money was simply a ‘gesture of friendship’* rather than anything related to Redknapp’s job.
Harry Redknapp Cleared Of Tax Evasion Charges
The jury has returned a unanimous verdict in Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp’s tax evasion trial: Not guilty.
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*Clearly I need better friends.
Redknapp and Tottenham have had the spectre of this trial hanging over their collective heads for the past few years now, and they’ll be mightily relieved that it’s over and the manager’s been completely cleared. That didn’t express Redknapp expressing his annoyance about the whole thing:
My family … have really pulled through it these last five years that this has been hanging over us. I’m really just looking forward to getting home … It really has been a nightmare, I’ve got to be honest. This is a case that should never have come to court. It’s unbelievable, really.
With Redknapp avoiding jail, the cries for him to replace Italian Fabio Capello as England manager are getting louder and louder. Spurs, meanwhile, avoid a huge disruption to the run-in with the worry of having to replace a highly successful on-field manager in the middle of the season evaporating.
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