The Quest That Never Began - Whatever Happened To The Stevens Inquiry?

Jamie.

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In 2007 a Premier League commissioned inquiry led by Lord Stevens into agents in the game with the aim of regulating the off-the-record payments and backhands in English football holding any conspicuous findings to account. The FA and Premier League lauded this inquiry at the time as a real 'ball breaker' on the agents part, saying it will look into every financial detail on the Premier League clubs balance sheets. The Stevens report in 2007 sparked outrage as Lord Stevens named agents and deals that he believed to be corrupt or at the very least suspicious. Within the hour of the findings being published Souness' lawyers and agencies around the country put up a wall and denied everything and anything. The following is what the FA said in a statement when the findings report came out:

An FA spokesman said: "Following the final report of the Premier League's Quest Inquiry, the FA will give full consideration to its contents and the documentation that is due to be passed on by the Premier League and Quest."


The Premier League and the FA have agreed to carry out random spot-checks on future transfers using Quest.


This Quest inquiry was supposed to bring in recommendations and legislation that could be enforced with the view of improving English football's transparency. The report itself was merely results of their findings with the view to extend the commission by 2 years and report back every 3 months with recommendations and findings of irregularities involving agents.

Four years down the line and agents have as much influence as ever with fees inflating at a rate that would make Zimbabwean bankers tremble. The Kun Aguero deal, for example, is estimated to be worth (net) at 100 million pounds tying in agent fees/contract/add ons. Compare that to the Yakubu transfer to Middlesbrough which the Stevens report flagged up, which is estimated to have had 2 million pounds in hidden agent fees, and you can see the leap.

According to agents at the time, who denied everything, they gave the Quest team full 'unprecedented' access to their agencies bank accounts (England and BI only) but denied them access to any non British based business accounts and any financial ventures deemed 'non football related'. So from the start we can presume Lord Stevens was hindered by the scale of the modern game, to think that agents keep their money in British banks is fairly naive with a lot of whistle blowers since stating they would use accounts in Monaco/Switzerland and always used investment accounts in this country rather than business accounts. Sam Allardyce's son was implicated in the Quest findings and he was tied to several transfers that were made when his father was boss of Bolton Wanderer's, he denied all accusations, despite all 4 of the flagged up Bolton transfers involving his clients (incoming transfers to Bolton). At the time the sense was that the FA and PL would follow up on this report and put in place a dedicated 'task force' tasked with investigating deals and regulating agents, yet since this report has been published there has been no follow up commission's or investigations merely talk and speculation. Steven's is as independent an observer as you can get, his task force had in the Premier League's own words 'unprecedented and absolute access to finances'.

The question has to be asked as to why no follow up inquiry has been sanctioned or why further investigation into agents in modern football has not been pursued. To be a registered FIFA agent it does not take a lot, and unless a court of arbitration rules against an agent in a civil suite essentially the likelihood is they will not be brought to account or investigated.



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Andy Carroll's former agent, turned whistleblower, recently revealed that he got over 1.2 million pounds for 2 days work by negotiating a 'top Premier League player' a transfer. He also revealed that the majority of clubs use one agent or one agency for all of their transfer deals therefore limiting the potential market for transfers, he also implies manager collusion and agent 'kickbacks' which could be as much as £1.4 million per day during a transfer window.

The scary part is the Premier League has essentially said since 2007 'its not our job, its the FAs', the FA have not commissioned or implicated any new laws in over 2 years in regards to agent code and conduct. They have received in the past 5 years over 2300 notifications by agents/players/club officials in relation to transfers, it's not known how many claims have been followed up on but I would suggest not a lot.



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The question is, having seen Portsmouth go under mainly down to inflated agent involvement and strange transfers and Blackburn seemingly heading down the 'Sports management manage us all' route is it right to throw inquiries to the side of the road simply because the accused agents denied the accusations and Souness threw his toys out of the pram?

Without anyone holding these agents to account or even investigating the state of the game that most fans don't see, how long is it before we and the FA stand by to witness another English football club fall under 'agency management'?
 
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