Royal Rother Big Shaka - EVERYTHING added up perfectly, the accounts DO balance, the detail is shown in the financial reports filed at Companies House - NOTHING is missing, it's just that the costs are a little bit more than everyone imagines them to be, and the income not as great.
We have made a profit of circa £6m in each of the last 2 years' published accounts - £7m of that went on paying off a bank borrowing. NOTHING has EVER been paid to Mr Madejski up to June 2008 - not 1 penny. And the loans he has made to finance the club over the last 2 decades have always been free of any interest charges.
The accounts are audited and nothing can be hidden away. If you won't believe that, then my post is a total waste of 10 minutes of my life.
Things might have been different in 2008/2009 and perhaps a proportion of the proceeds of the sale of Kitson, Shorey and Sonko DID go to pay some of the interest free loans advanced by Madejski - we don't know yet. It has never happened before and pretty detailed sums have shown on other threads that it is extremely likely that, even with the parachute payment, the club will still have lost money, so it is more likely that whatever surplus exists on player sales has been used to strengthen the Balance Sheet in other areas and to counteract the club's Trading Loss before player trading.
We shall see at the end of September I suppose.
Maxwell and ENRON were massive frauds - accountants do not, by habit, hide stuff away from interested eyes. There are a whole variety of reasons why they do not do that, but believe me, it is a fantasy that all accountants shuffle the numbers to show what their client wants them to show. It does happen but nothing like as often as people like to speculate, and it would be very difficult to do it at a football club because the accounting rules are so strict, specific and regulated by a number of independent means.
Dammit, I got sucked in again.
Excellent post.