THE LOAN
| It was to enable us to come out of administration and comply with Football
League regulations, said executive director David Davies. That was back in May 2002. QPR said at the time that the League would not allow us to start the 2002/3 season in administration. And so the death by a thousand cuts began. Four years into the 10 year loan QPR has already paid, in interest alone, the sum of £4m. We pay the interest monthly, so we have to find £83,333 each month. It is a 10-year loan at 10% annual interest. This means we have to pay £1m in interest each year, and then repay the lump sum of £10m at the end of the 10 years as well. According to Davies, the loan was arranged by the administrator Ray Hocking of BDO Stoy Hayward and the lender was an acquaintance of Hocking's. The loan is secured against QPR's ground which means that if we don't keep up with the repayments the lender can force the sale of Loftus Road to get his money back. The identity of the lender, given that he has the power to make QPR homeless, is therefore vitally important. The lender is believed by many QPR fans to be one Michael Hunt, whose identity was first revealed in a posting on the www.qprnet.com messageboard in March 2003 as follows: "QPR ground in hands of convicted fraudster The man who QPR directors mortgaged the Loftus Road ground to last year is 69-year old convicted fraudster Michael Hunt. A multi-millionaire with no interest in football but a keen eye for a property deal, Hunt served four years in prison in the 1990s for his part in Britain's biggest ever tax fraud. Michael Hunt spent 17 years as Managing Director of Nissan UK, owning 13.5% of the £1billion-valued company. Throughout that period he and Nissan chief Octav Botnar fraudulently evaded taxes of over £200 million. Hunt was arrested in 1991 and later convicted of tax fraud, whilst Botnar fled to Switzerland out of reach of the Inland Revenue. Hunt and Botnar had evaded tax by setting up sham companies and so-called charitable trusts overseas, notably in Panama. Botnar had also hidden money in offshore trusts for his children. Michael Hunt, an associate of Ray Hocking, has lent Queens Park Rangers million at 10.5% interest via the Panamanian-based ABC Corporation which he has set up with his children named as beneficiaries and which he himself can access via a back-door trust. Hunt owns a portfolio of
property including the East Sussex National Golf Club. One of the company
directors at the East Sussex National Golf Club is Philip Englefield, who
briefly served on the QPR Board in 2002 as Michael Hunt's representative." |