After Belgium and France, England is now also on Mogi Bayat’s heels: player agent’s ties with Watford investigated | Sport

The English Football Association (FA) is examining whether there is a conflict of interest in the relationship between Bayat and Lorenzo Gallucci. The latter was the former director of Hornets Investment, the parent company behind second division club Watford, at the same time that he had Cords Holdings and Galzar Consulting under his wing. The latter two companies worked together with MB Foot, Bayat’s English vehicle that he had created in June 2019.

Gallucci left Hornets Investment in September 2020, but only after working with Bayat for 15 months. He even had a 4% share in MB Foot until May 2021. In 2019 Watford was still a club in the Premier League, but a year later it dropped to The Championship where it still resides today.

Under FA rules, a club cannot have an interest in a third party or vice versa. Watford told ‘The Athletic’ that they only pay MB Foot for help with transfer and contract negotiations through the usual channels and that there are no rules broken in the relationship between Gallucci and Bayat.

Earlier this month, the public prosecutor of Rennes already started a judicial investigation into Bayat on suspicion of “illegal exercise of the profession of players’ agent, money laundering and gang formation”, the French sports newspaper L’Equipe learned from a judicial source. According to the newspaper, Mogi Bayat’s transfer network at FC Nantes is being targeted.

Bayat, one of the main suspects in the Operation Zero case in our country, has had good ties with FC Nantes for years and arranged numerous transfers, including to and from Belgian clubs. “The preliminary investigation carried out by the Rennes public prosecutor’s office led to the launch of a judicial investigation on June 29, 2022, prosecutor Philipe Astruc confirmed to L’Equipe. FC Nantes tells the newspaper that it has no further information about the investigation.

In Belgium, Bayat will still have to answer to the criminal court for his role in Operation Zero, also known as Clean Hands, the investigation into fraud in Belgian football. Initially there were 57 suspects, 56 natural persons and one company. They are suspected of forgery, money laundering, match fixing and membership of a criminal organization. In the meantime, ten suspects have already concluded an amicable settlement with the federal prosecutor’s office.

The file itself is now with the Antwerp Chamber of Indictment (KI), the body that must decide on the referral. Because several parties have requested additional investigative actions, the case has been postponed indefinitely. As a result, the file had to be returned to the examining magistrate, who will decide whether or not to answer those questions.