More arrests in Anglo-French £5m tax investigation

Wednesday’s HMRC investigation into Newcastle, Chelsea and West Ham dealing with Marseille has seen former Newcastle midfielder Sylvain Marveaux arrested.

French newspaper Le Parisien report that their information is that they know of three football agents being arrested along with Marveaux and all four taken in for questioning as part of the all-encompassing investigation.

One of Mike Ashley and Graham Carr’s disastrous ‘bargain’ signings, in the five years he was on Newcastle’s books the midfielder/winger started only 13 Premier League matches and scored a single league goal.

It was business as usual at West Ham on Thursday morning as Slaven Bilic faced the press at Rush Green. Thirty HMRC officials had swooped on the London Stadium and the club’s Rush Green training ground on Wednesday morning with a warrant as part of an Anglo-French investigation into suspected £5m tax fraud in football.

There were no arrests at West Ham, and no phones or computers were confiscated with insiders confident the club have done nothing wrong.

Manager Slaven Bilic and his players had a day off yesterday so were not at either the training ground or the stadium, while joint-owners David Gold and David Sullivan were also not present when the raids took place. Bilic could therefore not comment on the incident during his pre-match press conference.