Sheffield Wednesday confirmed on Friday night that the EFL dropped their charges against Dejphon Chansiri, Katrien Meire and John Redgate regarding their probe on November 14, 2019.
Wednesday said in an official statement: “The EFL has written to the Club and informed it that the EFL has dropped all of the charges it issued against Mr Chansiri, Ms Meire and Mr Redgate on 14 November 2019.
“Each of the individuals considers this a vindication of their defence of the charges. In the Club’s view this decision is a recognition of the strength of the evidence that the Club has filed before league arbitration panels, which demonstrated that there was no proper basis for the charges.”
The charges related to Chansiri’s controversial purchase of Hillsborough which helped Wednesday avoid breaching Financial Fair Play regulations. The Owls have always insisted they acted above board with the backing of the EFL and said they have emails, letters and documents proving authorisation was given to the transaction.
As per the Financial Fair Play regulations, sides are only allowed to make a £39m loss over three years. Wednesday would have posted a pre-tax loss of £35.4m in 2017/18 after deficits of £9.8m and £20.8m in the previous two seasons had they not sold their ground.
Chansiri’s £60m deal helped them record a pre-tax profit of £2.5m for 2017-18. The EFL were confident they had sufficient evidence to charge, but their U-turn suggests otherwise. No disciplinary action will be taken which is great news for the Owls as they were facing a sizeable points deduction if found guilty. Chansiri could have been banned from football.
Wednesday will be glad to not have the probe hanging over their heads, but now they’re left in limbo as to when the season will resume following the Covid-19 postponement.
