Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani is being sued for £760million by Chinese investors after a sports deal went bust, according to Bloomberg.
The financial site claim the consortium, including state-owned Everbright Securities Co., have filed a claim in the High Court in London, alleging commercial fraud against MP & Silva founders Radrizzani and Riccardo Silva.
Radrizzani’s sports rights company MP & Silva was bought out by the group in 2016 in a deal valued at £760million, but collapsed in October of last year due to unpaid debts.
OPINION
United fans will be reading this explosive report and thinking two things; ‘er, this doesn’t sound good’, and, ‘how does it affect Leeds’? This is not the first time Radrizzani has been caught in a business storm this season, following the troubles of sports streaming service Eleven Sports at the end of last year. At the time, the word coming from Leeds was that Radrizzani’s business crisis would not affect the club. How can it not when the United main man is in full-blown crisis mode, amid speculation in the national media he has made alarming behind-the-scenes move to seek financial guarantees should United fail to reach the Premier League promised land in May? Radrizzani sold some of his MP & Silva stock before he bought Leeds and it shouldn’t make much difference on the pitch for now. It remains to be seen how this will play out, and at the moment Radrizzani has merely been named in a lawsuit. He’s not been ordered to pay a penny by a court. Yet.