‘My policy is not to get into a car that won’t start,’ Christopher Forsythe said as he shielded his eyes from a fierce Accra sun. ‘It’s a very good project and I’m happy to be involved.’ I had been corresponding with Forsythe for almost a year. It was the first, and only time, we met. It was a meeting by chance. One which very nearly didn’t happen. He was one of the first Fifa registered agents who had received Scout Network’s email about looking for partners to bring under-18s to England. In a professional and detailed reply, Forsythe wrote: ‘I would like to have the chance to explain in more detail the project that I have set up initially in Ghana to establish a steady pipeline of top level footballing talent into European clubs.’ His focus was ‘providing young (typically 16–23) players’ to Europe.
Although Hamid, Imari and Lois had revealed how players were moved from continent to continent, I wanted to know more. Specifically, how people within football were ignoring Article 19. I wanted more details from an agent who was not afraid of skullduggery. More tricks, more scams, more cheats. Of course, I didn’t ask Forsythe if he was that man, but I impressed upon him the need for an expert in moving underage players. ‘I assure you that you have come to the right person,’ he told me.
Indeed, I had. Almost two months later to the day he sent that email, Forsythe was the subject of a sting by the Daily Telegraph newspaper and the Channel 4 documentary programme, Dispatches. He had been exposed agreeing to fix Ghana’s international fixtures by using corrupted referees. The investigation cast a shadow over the World Cup, which was taking place in Brazil at the time. The Telegraph labelled it a ‘football match-fixing deal’. Its exclusive read:
Reporters from the Telegraph and a former Fifa investigator claimed they represented an investment company that wanted to ‘sponsor’ games. Christopher Forsythe, a registered Fifa agent, along with Obed Nketiah, a senior figure in the Ghanaian FA, boasted that they could employ corrupt officials who would rig matches played by Ghana.
The president of the country’s football association then met the undercover reporter and investigator, along with Mr Forsythe and Mr Nketiah, and agreed a contract which would see the team play in the rigged matches, in return for payment.
The contract stated that it would cost $170,000 (£100,000) for each match organised by the fixers involving the Ghanaian team, and would allow a bogus investment firm to appoint match officials, in breach of Fifa rules. ‘You [the company] will always have to come to us and say how you want it to go . . . the result,’ said Mr Forsythe. ‘That’s why we will get the officials that we have greased their palms, so they will do it. If we bring in our own officials to do the match . . . You’re making your money.’
Mr Forsythe said that match fixing was ‘everywhere’ in football and that he could even arrange rigged matches between Ghana and British teams. ‘The referees can change the matches every time. Even in England it does happen,’ he said. Following the meeting in London, the representative of the investment firm asked if his company could be sure their approach would work. Mr Forsythe replied: ‘We will always choose associations/countries that we think we can corrupt their officials for all our matches.’ He listed a number of African and European countries, adding ‘we can look for match officials who will sing to our tune’.
I had contacted Forsythe by chance, deploying the method used by the fakes and the rogues mentioned by Jake Marsh and Eby Emenike: emailing as many agents as possible. Forsythe would go underground, I thought, after the Telegraph story broke. And he did, telling me on the telephone that he was suffering from malaria. However, there was something about Forsythe’s demeanour in the Dispatches documentary that made me believe all was not lost. He was a showman. He loved to be the centre of attention. People were hanging on his every word as he ‘educated’ them about football corruption. So I kept emailing him as if the Telegraph sting had not happened, informing him of the progress of Scout Network; how we had established links with other football clubs and the successful scouting trip to Larnaca. Forsythe wrote back, ‘I appreciate your interest in working with us and by this email I am introducing you to my colleague Ralph Gyambrah, who will be in charge coordinating with you for a successful program in Ghana. Please liaise with him as he is aware of all your plans.’
Before the year was out Gyambrah had been appointed as the general manager of Berekum Chelsea, the club whose chief executive, Obed Nketiah, was embarrassed with Forsythe in the Telegraph exposé. Gyambrah had founded DC United, a lower league Ghana team, with Forsythe and had suggested he had experience of taking players to Italy. That nugget of information gave me the opening I was after. ‘We would like to scout players in Ghana and then eventually bring them to England to play in League Two football,’ ‘John’ wrote. ‘The younger the better. This will be easier if we can take them to Italy, or another European mainland destination first, as it will be then easier to move them on to England because of border controls. Where I will require your expertise is getting the players to Italy (passports and visas) and an agreement with a “holding” club.’ This was the illegal ‘bridge transfer’, a move which Lois had taught me in Larnaca.
Gyambrah was on board. He wrote that he had ‘drifted to the Portuguese market to see how best we can partner clubs since lots of new laws are being passed in Italy making it difficult to place players’. He added that the cost of moving one player from Ghana to Europe, and ‘taking care’ of him, would be about £1,000 for six months. We agreed to meet in Accra to discuss the fine detail.
The day before that meeting, Gyambrah emailed to say he had made an ‘impromptu’ trip to Italy. Instead, he suggested I spoke with his chief scout called ‘the Major’. I was not interested in talking to a scout, so I emailed Forsythe, complaining that I had gone all the way to Ghana to talk about a partnership with his associate and he had let me down. Forsythe said he would step in. ‘I am talking to Bruno, my new contact in Portugal, about the possibility of creating a partnership to place players from Ghana through there for onwards transfer to English League One and Two clubs,’ he wrote. He asked for the full details of Scout Network’s project. During some downtime by the hotel pool, ‘John’ got creative.
The plan
To identify young talent because it is an opportunity for English clubs to get ahead of the bigger clubs in the Premier league, who capture ALL the young talent in the UK. Our business plan focuses on finding young talent in other territories. We are looking at under-18s all over the world. But Ghana is a great place to start because of its reputation.
The clubs
We have agreements with League One and League Two clubs to search for players. Because of the number of clubs we are working for we have a pool of money to find the best players. This gives us an advantage over other scouts who are tasked by one club to look for one player, making scouting very expensive. We are tasked by four or five clubs looking for players in up to 20 positions. All the clubs we work for are go-ahead and ambitious. They recognise the need to look in new territories.
The talent
We would prefer to find under-17s as it is a sad, but true, fact that a lot of players if they are not scouted and signed by 18 may not be good enough. So we need to find players who have not been seen before. We are in it for the long term and plan to be visiting Ghana five or six times a year to watch a player progress.
The territories
We have agreements with partners in Larnaca, Cyprus, Sierra Leone, France (specifically Ligue 2) and Florida, USA.
Partners
We require partners who are able to help us solve issues. In this regard we are interested in a partnership with Portugal as discussed.
Forsythe was happy with what he had read. It was a ‘very good idea to catch them young,’ he replied. I stressed, once again, that it would be his job to ‘assist us logistically, specifically with regard to the problem of finding a club in Italy or, as you alluded to following conversation with Bruno, Portugal. We need partners who can help us get players to territories where they will be able to come to the UK.’
In another email Forsythe said, ‘This project requires hard work. I am a workaholic and would not get into a car that won’t drive so [am] always clear on goals and objectives for end results. I will put my 100 per cent in so expect results at the end of the day.’ The undercover Telegraph journalists were also promised ‘100 per cent’.
The next day, we met at the Mövenpick hotel in Accra. Forsythe had a roly-poly figure and small, squashed eyes in a chubby face. He was polite, softly spoken and after pleasantries sat by the pool wasted no time in telling me exactly how he thought it would operate. He drew diagrams in his notebook. He had it all worked out. He had done it before.
What followed was a precise guide to football’s trade in kids. He revealed how to buy players for as little as £370 and not pay them a salary. ‘We only need to feed them,’ he said. Crucial to the project was setting up a ‘ghost’ club in Ghana, which would be owned by Scout Network, to circumnavigate Fifa’s rules on transferring minors and third-party ownership. He boasted of a ‘visa loophole’ which would allow the movement of under-18s to the UK through his NGO, ForSports Foundation, in the guise of improving the lives of the underprivileged. ‘We have the potential to bypass international transfer certificates and work permits,’ he said proudly.
Forsythe’s charity work had given him an air of respectability. He was born into poverty in Ghana before being adopted by a Belfast schoolteacher. He had supported Glentoran FC. When he returned to live in Ghana, in the Sunyani area in the west of the country, he set up an academy and named it after the Irish club. Supporters sponsored individual kids and raised funds to improve its facilities. The charity, which aimed to empower kids through football, was ‘funded’ by his football scouting and management agency, ForSports Management. In return, Forsythe had a potential pool of talent. It was this ethically vague arrangement which seemed to inspire the idea for his partnership with Scout Network.
‘We get to help the kids,’ he said. ‘We get the player.’ Naturally Forsythe wanted something for himself. He asked for a salary for his expertise of smoothing the paths for players to move abroad. And a bit more besides. ‘I believe in not what I get now but the end resource so . . . in two years the players have been going for £1 million and £2 million. I want an agreement to have a percentage of any future transfers.’
From the outset, Forsythe assured me there would be no issue moving players under the age of 18 to Europe. ‘There wouldn’t be a problem, my other company is a travel consultancy. We are trying to move four or five players to Italy. There won’t be a problem.’
There wouldn’t be a problem finding the players, either. His plan was to scout for talent in the three northern regions of Ghana, the Ashanti region and the west of the country. His scouting team would identify ‘25 to 30 players’ who would then be brought to a tournament to be attended by Scout Network, who would pick the best players ‘to move to Portugal, Italy’. Then they would be moved to England.
Forsythe said that players could be bought from clubs – or academies similar to the size of Lois’s – for 5,000 Ghana cedis or as little as 2,000 cedis (£370). Scout Network would ‘own them 100 per cent’ so there would be no need for those clubs or academies to receive training compensation in the future. ‘We just feed them, give them somewhere to sleep,’ Forsythe said. ‘We don’t have to pay a salary.’
Those players would then be signed to a club in the Ghana second division which had been specifically founded for our project. It was the ghost club, to be owned by Scout Network. The club would play in the league but it would be used primarily to groom players for Europe. It was a plan which brought out the showman in Forsythe and laid bare how, in Ghana, rules and regulations were to be disregarded when there was money to be made.
‘Scout Network as a company cannot own the players,’ he said. ‘So we need to create something which 100 per cent has an agreement with Scout Network and will be the one to move players [to Europe]. It is owned by Scout Network. Scout Networks hides behind [the club] to move the players. Because if you go to a club in Italy and you, as a company, own the player, moving [the player] will be difficult. Fifa are trying to abolish third-party ownership. We can have a division two club with no intention of going up to any level in Ghana. Scout Network owns that club and will do all the transfers. If the player is scouted by Scout Network and they are [trying to] move them, Scout Network will not get [authorisation] from the Ghana FA because they don’t know you. If they hide behind the club they can use the club to facilitate the transfer to Portugal or Italy. The club will then request an international transfer certificate from the Ghana FA.’
No player could move from one country to another without an international transfer certificate. They were issued by the ‘selling’ football association. So if a player was moving from Ghana to Portugal, it would be the Ghana FA who would be responsible for the certificate, or ITC as it is known in the industry.
‘So this is a ghost club?’ I said.
‘Exactly. Every player coming from here is owned by Scout Network, they own the club and use that division two club in Ghana . . . to move [players] to Portugal, request the ITC from the Ghana FA because the club is affiliated to the Ghana FA.’
‘To all intents and purposes they think the club owns the player but we are behind the curtain?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Forsythe said, looking very pleased with himself. ‘If it is called Scout FC [Forsythe decided this would be the name of the ‘ghost’ club], who are the owners? Scout Network. If Scout FC source a player the money goes to Scout Network, [who are] not breaching any third-party ownership.’
‘This is the expertise I need.’
‘There is no purpose of [the club] going to division one or the Premier League in Ghana,’ Forsythe said. ‘The purpose of the club is for the players to train. At the end of the day the players [have] to be ready for the next destination. We need to apply for visas to Portugal, we need an introduction letter from the Ghana FA for the purpose of visas. It’s very important we get Scout FC.’
‘I leave all that to you?’
‘Yeah, otherwise we breach Fifa rules.’
‘Behind the curtain . . .’
‘Yes.’
Forsythe told me DC United, the club he said he owned with Ralph Gyambrah, was ‘behind the curtain’, allowing them to move their players to Italy. He said he would run Scout Network’s club for me. ‘It’s not expensive,’ he said.
A conveyor belt of talent to Europe, having players ready to go every year, would be needed, according to Forsythe. He suggested keeping the small clubs and academies sweet by gifting sets of balls and kit so to have ‘first refusal’ on their players.
‘My expertise is to manage this, prepare them for the move, do visa applications, do everything for you. I will start working for the first five players to go and when the first five are gone . . . you still have 20. The second batch. When the next five have gone I prepare to move the next five. You say to me, “Chris, we are moving one to three players from Portugal to League One and Two [in England], get the next batch ready.”’
It was the mysterious Bruno who would be able to get the players into Portuguese clubs. ‘He works with a company back in Mayfair,’ Forsythe said. ‘He knows somebody who has a division two club in Portugal.’ He didn’t disclose the name of the club. He showed me a memorandum of understanding with Bruno. ‘He has to be involved as [we’re] using him to take players to Portugal,’ Forsythe said. ‘We will be using the lower divisions a lot. Mostly the lower league clubs will be interested in such an agreement.’
There was, surely, a problem. As we know, Article 19 of Fifa’s transfer regulations does not permit the international transfers of a player under the age of 18. That’s why Fifa’s Transfer Matching System (TMS) had been set up, specifically to counter transfer frauds. The TMS demands that the selling club has to provide all the details of a player, including his age, and this had to be ‘matched’ by the purchasing club otherwise the transfer would not be allowed to happen. Only if every piece of data ‘matched’ could an ITC be issued by the Ghana FA. Forsythe looked at me with pity, as if to say, ‘This guy has no idea how things work here.’
‘TMS over here?’ he said dismissively. ‘We are not into the system properly. We take care of them. Don’t worry about those areas. Every player we move we can get ITCs.’
‘Regardless of age?’
‘Yeah. But not under-14, that is too young.’
Forsythe explained that he had been able to take under-18s to Italy on student, or temporary visas, and place them in the academy or youth set-ups of squads until they turned 18. He was then able to apply for an ITC through the Ghana FA. Failing that, he said it didn’t matter if they were under 18 because ‘most players in Ghana are not registered as professionals, they are amateur’.
In reality, there was no exemption under Article 19 for amateur under-18s being allowed to move.
‘So, at 16 we take the player to Portugal with Bruno and on a student visa?’ I asked.
‘Then you apply for an ITC at 18,’ Forsythe said. ‘The Ghana FA will see that he played for Scout FC so he qualifies for an ITC.’
‘Can he play?’
‘Yes he can play, but not earn anything. Food and accommodation the club pays.’
That sounded like a slave contract. There was another trick up Forsythe’s sleeve. It was the more notable ploy of how he could ignore visa and work-permit rules to get an under-18 into England. By using an NGO as cover, it would be possible for Scout Network to take a player directly to one of its English clubs. Forget Italy. Forget Portugal. The only caveat, Forsythe said, was that one had to be careful not to try it too often as the authorities would become suspicious. In an earlier email he had described it as a ‘loophole’. Once again he revelled in delivering a lesson: ‘Yeah that one . . . to do with the foundation . . . that is the UK. You know I work with underprivileged children. Some are very good footballers. The League One club can say, “OK, look, we have seen a player from a project in Ghana and we think we can bring the player. The option is not for the player to play football, it is to continue his education and we are bringing him from a foundation in Ghana, a recognised NGO which trains underprivileged football players.” So they know that in bringing the player from this area to the UK, they are trying to help the children. In future they will have a better life and, at the end of the day, they can help reduce the poverty, help the family. The League One club can pick the player straight from here. That can happen. We can say, “There is a player over here who is good and if you are interested we can bring you the player.”’
‘What about visa problems, Chris?’
‘They have no issue because the papers are not to play football. But at the end of day they are glad they are bringing the player over, he has no future in Ghana. This player . . . educationally he is good and he knows how to play football, so the club picks the player, he goes to the academy, continues his education and plays football. So you have helped reduce poverty back here.’
‘And we get our player.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Even though he is 16? And what about an ITC?’
‘He can play because the club brought the player to the UK to give him a better life. He doesn’t need an ITC because the club is taking care of the education. My NGO has this. We can make Scout FC an NGO in Ghana.’
So ‘Scout FC’ would not only be a ghost club purely set up to move players abroad (with no interest in winning matches) but an NGO which claimed to be helping kids out of poverty by sending them to the UK on ‘scholarships’. The key was stating that they were moving to further their education. Football would be secondary.
‘He is going as a student but he has the quality to play football,’ Forsythe said. ‘First it is to continue the education and at the same time he is playing. It’s like students who are allowed to work 15 hours a week.’
I massaged Forsythe’s ego a little: ‘This is very impressive. This is expertise. This was my concern, how to move [under-]16s.’
‘I have gone through the system and I know it works,’ Forsythe said. ‘They can go to sixth form in the UK. Education is the priority . . . after three years you can apply for residency.’
‘So we have the potential to bypass ITC and work-permit rules?’
‘If we have submitted the visa application they will need a letter from the club – they will sponsor the child for his education and there will be a letter from the school and a sponsor letter from the club and they will issue the visa.’
‘We can move 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds?’
‘Yeah, as long as they are academically good, ’cos we’re trying to give a better life.’
Forsythe made it sound almost noble. ‘I knew there were ways to move players without ITCs,’ I mused. ‘I just didn’t know how.’
There was a smug look on Forsythe’s face. He sat back in his chair to either bask in the heat or his own glory. ‘So,’ he said, ‘how soon can we start the car?’
Following Forsythe’s meeting with John, I emailed him to offer him a right to reply to my allegations. He said he knew John was recording the conversation. ‘I made sure I was careful in all discussions with him,’ he wrote. ‘I didn’t say anything contrary to the rules of the transfers of minors in football.’ Forsythe admitted planning to set a club in Ghana but denied it was a ‘ghost’ club. With regard to the NGO ‘loophole’, he argued that he would never ‘sanction a move for a minor to travel for just football purposes’. He also revealed that the match-fixing exposé ‘nearly led me to a suicide mission’.
In February 2015 Forsythe was banned by the Ghana FA for three years from all football-related activity and had his agent’s licence revoked for his role in the match-fixing sting. The car, most definitely, was going nowhere.