John Delaney at the FAI Thread - (Mod Notes in OP)

Umaro wrote: »

There's an audit watchdog for Ireland called the IAASI. They could fine Deloitte or prohibit them from auditing if they were found to be negligent.


I'm not sure if that would actually happen though, it depends how badly they screwed up their audit process or were they complicit (which would be jawdroppingly stupid). The FAI are on the brink of collapse, and football in Ireland is going to enter a very dark period of austerity. People will start to ask wtf Deloitte have been doing over the past 20 years to allow this to happen, and I could see some politician getting the bit between their teeth to take them to task.


The collapse of Enron brought down its auditors when they were found to be complicit in the dodgy stuff. (There used to be a "Big 5" of accountancy firms, now its a Big 4). Deloitte would have to be caught red-handed for something similar to happen here. They're definitely getting some reputational damage out of this.

it's about time a big company came down in Ireland in this space .

100s of thousands of kids play ball and the organisation has fallen. And government have withdrawn funding.

sorry to use the line , but it cant be just the kids who get shafted. The ones who should be shafted deserve it.

hopefully criminal convictions.

I simply wont take this , "we didn't see this bull**** " the Fai was claiming it will pay off a proxy stadium and suddenly are completely broke.

come on , no explanation can get auditors out of this one.

Bridge93 wrote: »

I doubt Deloitte were complicit in anything. Far more likely it was just negligence or whatever you want to call it. €1m over 20 years is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things when compared to the turnover and other fees of these companies. I would say it’s far more likely that the fee wasn’t big enough to warrant any real attention and they just wanted to get the job through with as little time and hassle as possible. Without knowing the intricacies of the transactions and cover ups, with that mindset and, as someone else already pointed out, the nature of the employees sent on the jobs, it wouldn’t be too hard for an accountant who knows what they’re doing to hide a bit of cash each year.

What that would tell me though is that despite the innocent acts there are people in the company who knew far more than is being let on. Delaney doesn’t do all this by himself

They were complicit in negligence, enough for me.

The figures are so large, I'd imagine they are more worried than your post suggests.

Who are they sending into o these audits, couple of pissed students ?

what has happened to professionalism?

FixdePitchmark wrote: »

it's about time a big company came down in Ireland in this space .

100s of thousands of kids play ball and the organisation has fallen. And government have withdrawn funding.

sorry to use the line , but it cant be just the kids who get shafted. The ones who should be shafted deserve it.

hopefully criminal convictions.

I simply wont take this , "we didn't see this bull**** " the Fai was claiming it will pay off a proxy stadium and suddenly are completely broke.

come on , no explanation can get auditors out of this one.

I don't know about criminal charges, that'll be harder to prove but Deloitte should suffer serious reputational damage and get kicked hard in the nuts.

Realistically, the FAI literally couldn't be in a worse financial position. They're effectively bankrupt. There are accounting records missing. There were payments made that the President and other board members didn't know about. The CEO was receiving money that should have attracted BIK and it didn't. From a compliance point of view, I can't think how the auditors could have been more incompetent or willfully ignorant.

They've been the auditors since 1997. That's 22 years. This wasn't the same auditor coming in. There is something wrong with Deloitte as a company if they could have overseen this ****show for 22 years and not seen a problem that was exposed by a journalist.

I'm seething with anger over this and much of it is towards Deloitte.

Soulsun wrote: »

Fictional accounting by John Delaney whom I believe is a member of CAI chartered accountants Ireland

Closing up shop I’d imagine is inevitable at this stage. Public opinion is bad, really really bad.

I don't doubt Delaney instigated quite a bit of fictional accounting. However, the fundamentals of auditing are questioning everything and looking for a check and balance to verify what you're being told. If you find information that conflicts with what you've been told, you smell a rat. If the association can't give you that information or tell you what the check and balance is, as an auditor, you raise a red flag. You don't sign off the accounts.

FixdePitchmark wrote: »

His wages are just hard to get the head around, like he didn't seem that daft. Daft, but he seemed cuter ?

Does anyone know where he is ?

I'd love a camera on him.

In fairness , likes of Fitzpatrick (Anglo) just rode it out. I don't think Delaney has the balls to ride it out.

I'd say he will emigrate. Take a job at an African national team.

I think Delaney will care a lot more about what people think of him than the bankers. Delaney always wanted the limelight. He reminded me of the kid in school no one liked so he was now looking to be loved by everyone coz he'd made it big.

I think the press he's getting will hurt him but as he's f**king off into the sunset with money that shouldn't be his having bankrupted football in Ireland, I have zero sympathy for him. Long may the bad press and abuse continue. It's the only thing he's earned.

DeanAustin wrote: »

I don't know about criminal charges, that'll be harder to prove but Deloitte should suffer serious reputational damage and get kicked hard in the nuts.

Realistically, the FAI literally couldn't be in a worse financial position. They're effectively bankrupt. There are accounting records missing. There were payments made that the President and other board members didn't know about. The CEO was receiving money that should have attracted BIK and it didn't. From a compliance point of view, I can't think how the auditors could have been more incompetent or willfully ignorant.

They've been the auditors since 1997. That's 22 years. This wasn't the same auditor coming in. There is something wrong with Deloitte as a company if they could have overseen this ****show for 22 years and not seen a problem that was exposed by a journalist.

I'm seething with anger over this and much of it is towards Deloitte.

Don't think this is right at all.

It was Deloitte that alleged that the FAI had kept a second set of accounts that they didn't know about.

It's easy to have a go at the auditor, but when you have a management team who are skillful in accounting gymnastics, it's very, very hard for auditors to uncover irregularities.

Soulsun wrote: »

Fictional accounting by John Delaney whom I believe is a member of CAI chartered accountants Ireland

Closing up shop I’d imagine is inevitable at this stage. Public opinion is bad, really really bad.

JD is not, nor ever was, a member of CAI. There is a bull**** story that he passed all his exams while running one of his father's bakery businesses down in Kerry, I think, but he didn't bother applying for membership. This is horse**** like Bertie's degree from the London School of Economics. It's quite sad (and indicative) that these people are actually so insecure or vain that they feel the need to invent qualifications they wouldn't have a hope of attaining by sweat.

secman wrote: »

They also had to include a provision for the pension pay off which was due to be realised in 2021 or 2022 to the tune of €3m. But as the eventual liability ended up as a definite €370k, not sure how they treated this in the 2016 and 2017 restated Financials. They also redirected a lot of the credit card expenses to be personal to JD and not as FAI . A cold review of the 2016 and 2017 audit files would be very embarrassing to Deloitte I'd say. With the KOSI inspection also running it really put the pressure on Deloitte. It would appear that a lot of nods and winks were going on, sure look at the adjustment of €1m Sponsorship money that was restated as a Liiability as the small print on the contract was not read and noted.

This is the point of my original post. You don't restate the previous two years financials for an uplift of €1.25M when you know the eventual outcome is €460K paid this year (not €370K btw). The BIK and re-classification of expenses is relatively minor (by JD's standards). We know from the Sunday Times articles JD had a house worth €36K pa and he was using the company credit card for ATM withdrawals and meals in a pub across the road from his free house and for the occasional 'present' in duty free.

There is only so much pub grub you can stick into a face even as fat as JD's especially when you spend most of your time on 'legitimate business' attending away matches, CL fixtures as an observer, draws, EUFA, FIFA committees etc. (All the onerous mundane tasks that were on the job spec). I'm going to say there was a positively ridiculous €250K spent personally over the two years when adjusted upwards for the Revenue penalties.

That leaves €1M for the pension and loyalty payments. The €460K will be charged in this years accounts, so why does 2016 and 2017 include another €1M+? It can only be because he was either paid it during those years and it was somehow mis-classified by the auditors and not noticed by any of the other Directors or it was paid afterwards (ie this year) and someone is hoping we buy the line that JD settled a €3M contract for €460K.

As I said in my earlier post, it can only be one or the other. He got the money in 2016 and 2017 or he got it this year. TBH I am totally frustrated with all the coverage in the national media that no-one has asked this simple and obvious question. It's all there in the figures.

irishgeo wrote: »

imagine if JD won his injunction, we would be none the wiser and john would have got to 2021 and got his 3m bonus.

Yeah, and to think of all the people that were backing JD against the "bad" media.

If you think about all that has happened over the past decade - it's not just JD that is complicit. The media have been banned from AGM's and other events for years. There have to be numerous people who knew/know what was going on and let it slide.

Thankfully soccer is a game for everyone, that can be played almost anywhere - which it what makes it so appealing. It doesn't need the FAI to prosper in the country at the grassroots but it does need an over arching body to develop better facilities on the ground for kids and teens.

Zebra3 wrote: »

So we’re meant to praise Deloitte for noticing something when it was far too late?

The only reason yesterday happened was because of Mark Tighe and his editor backing him in digging into Delaney and the FAI, not because of Deloitte who are part of the problem.

Book-keeping at any business no matter the size comes down to one basic rule.

And we all know the phrase.

Balance the books.

Every €0.01 in income the FAI got has to be accounted for on the far side of the books as expenditure or money in the bank.

That’s a very basic approach to it, but it’s also not too far off the reality of it.

Deloitte, like Delaney, look to have gotten well paid for a job they weren’t doing.

The role of the auditor is to audit based on the information that is presented to them by management. The whole process depends on management being truthful in the numbers that they provide the auditors. I am sure that whatever accounts Delaney presented to Deloitte were all checked and corroborated completely. The problem here was that numbers presented were bogus. If management were lying about the numbers, this falls out of the jurisdiction of the auditor and into the authorities as it's a criminal act.

Francie Barrett wrote: »

The role of the auditor is to audit based on the information that is presented to them by management. The whole process depends on management being truthful in the numbers that they provide the auditors. I am sure that whatever accounts Delaney presented to Deloitte were all checked and corroborated completely. The problem here was that numbers presented were bogus. If management were lying about the numbers, this falls out of the jurisdiction of the auditor and into the authorities as it's a criminal act.

what's is the point of an audit so.

Surely an auditor can check the data fairly easily.

John Gill's comment!

topmanamillion wrote: »

"Grassroots" is ran by a 1000 mini John Delaneys.
Football hasn't a hope of competing with the GAA or IRFU.
OK, it's the most played sport in the country as you say that's down to the ease it can played. But at an elite level it's not even at the races compared to the big two in this country.
When a promising athlete has to make the decision between Football or GAA at 13 or 14, they're going to pick GAA every time.
Look at the centre of excellences and acadamies of the IRFU and GAA and compare them to the what the FAI can offer.

What we needed from the FAI over the last 20 years was investment in infrastructure, a well run respected League of Ireland with decent academies to give young players a chance of developing at home.
What we got were p1ss ups and a celebrity CEO more interested in getting his picture taken with his tongue down his girlfriends throat than doing his job.

I don't disagree with your last paragraph but I have to disagree with some of the rest. There are some very good people working at grass roots and there are some clubs with fantastic facilities - these clubs' "academies" do tend to sweep up the kids of parents who think their kids have a chance of going professional (Mostly pipe dreams) and I've seen GAA and IRFU lose out to teenagers picking Soccer because of this (obviously depending on the area)