UEFA warn associations over licensing the debt cheats

UEFA are poised to investigate the Serbian FA after they wrongly licensed Red Star Belgrade for next season’s Champions League.

Red Star have been thrown out of the draw for the competition with the ruling shows that UEFA are prepared to investigate and punish compliant associations, it is often said that Serbian football needs a strong Red Star.

A complaint was made directly to UEFA about delays over player wages which effectively meant that Red Star were using players that they couldn’t afford.

Rather than deal with the issue internally the Serbian FA took the view that reaching the group stages of the Champions League would go a long way towards solving the cash crisis at Red Star who are in debt of around €50m.

The website sportbusiness quotes a Serbian football official saying: “Red Star’s position was barely acceptable, but we also assessed that playing in Europe’s top-tier competition was the fast track to the club’s recovery.

“We are surprised by Uefa’s course of action against the FSS and we maintain that kicking Red Star out of Europe is a bitter blow to Serbian football as a whole.

The case has a number of parallels with Rangers 2011/12 licence when the SFA granted a European licence to the club despite an unpaid tax bill of £6m, known as the wee tax case. Had the SFA insisted that that bill was settled then Walter Smith is unlikely to have gone on the spending spree that brought James Beattie and Nikica Jelavic to Ibrox.

A group of concerned Celtic shareholders have raised the issue with the club in a bid to discover why the SFA licensed Rangers despite a £6m unpaid tax bill.

Announcing the sanctions the UEFA website said: “The CFCB ( Adjudicatory Chamber of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body) determined that the club were in breach of a number of provisions of the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations. Accordingly, Crvena zvezda (Red StarBelgrade) are excluded from participating in the 2014/15 UEFA Champions League for which they had qualified on sporting merit.

“The club have ten days to appeal this decision before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

“An investigation against the Football Association of Serbia (FSS) might be opened within the coming days by the chief investigator for alleged breaches of the club licensing regulations in relation to the granting of the licence to the same club.”

Partizan Belgrade will replace Red Star Belgrade in the second round draw of the Champions League. Campbell Ogilvie is the president of the SFA, Gordon Smith was the chief executive of the SFA when Rangers were given their 2011/12 license.