Watford and Mogi Bayat. A match made in corruption
Nothing like a slightly misleading headline to kick us off, although both parties in The Pozzo’s and Mogi Bayat have been convicted and continuously investigated for match fixing and money laundering. Anyway, this isn’t an article slating Watford for once, it’s more of an awareness piece into the kind of person Watford are dealing with in Mogi Bayat, and if you think it’s something you want going at the club. The one thing that can’t be argued is Gino Pozzo’s main concern is himself, Watford comes second — which is applicable to every owner ever in football, but it’s evident now that Gino Pozzo doesn’t have Watford’s best interests at heart. Moving on to Mogi, or Arnaud as he likes to be known as; became a player broker at the end of 2009 — mainly taking an interest in Belgian club Sporting Charleroi, where his two brothers are also involved. Fast forward 10 years and Mogi is being arrested for match fixing and money laundering, notably following the match between Anderlecht and Club Brugge in the 17/18 season — Police also seized the contracts of Obbi Oulare, Michel Preudhomme and Dino Arslanagic: all three players under the Creative & Management Group. Mogi is still being investigated for money laundering and fraud with a trial date set for 2023 in Antwerp, with one source saying to a Belgian newspaper that a conviction is “very likely” and that his actions are ludicrous, describing it as “the evil is deep with Mogi.”
But what’s any of that got to do with Watford? welllll quite a lot. As I mentioned before, Obbi Oulare was involved in Mogi’s dealings, and since then has filed a lawsuit against the agent, the grounds being fraud and violation of intermediary labour legislation. Oulare never wanted to move to Watford according to Bayat’s former associate Daniel Kimoni at Club Brugge, who was also involved in the deal. Kimoni gave an interview to Le Soir saying that Mogi Bayat would pocket the money owed to players — name dropping Dodi Lukebakio and Obbi Oulare. Kimoni said in the interview “We all went to London as we had an appointment at Watford’s training ground. At that point, we had less than 24 hours left in the transfer window to complete deals, all for Watford. For a long time, I’ve had the impression Mogi was the director of football at Watford because he was so at home in that office. Pozzo (Gino) just came and went throughout the day, leaving Mogi to to do what he wanted. That day, Mogi had four dossiers in front of him to complete, only three got completed.” As I’ve said previously and we know by now, one of those deals was Oulare — to which Kimoni explained; “ Obbi ended up being screwed over, Obbi admitted to me a few months later that Flores didn’t know him at all, knew nothing about him and had never seen him play. It was a dupe from the start as as Mogi got hold of Brugge CEO Vincent Mannaert and said “Make sure you get rid of the 20% owed to Oulare’s family otherwise the transfer won’t get done. Obbi’s family were forced to give up what they were promised, £800k. The £800k was then split between myself and Haeldermans, £400k each — it was blackmail and criminal conspiracy.”
This kind of deal is what alerted Belgian authorities, and what made Mogi Bayat move to London in 2020 after his Villa in Lasne was raided. Nathalie; Mogi’s wife said the reasoning behind the move was for higher level education, something they couldn’t get in Belgium. An unknown Watford player said to a Belgium publication Lavenir that “He’s so often at the training ground that you have the impression he has an office there, you would think he’s the Sporting Director there. He’s not an employee of the club but he is an agent regularly used because Gino Pozzo appreciates him.” Another agent said Mogi has been given the keys to do recruitment at these clubs, with Watford being the top of his network — which is evident since promotion to the Premier League, Mogi Bayat has been involved in 18 transfers to Watford, and that’s just what I’ve researched, there’s probably more — but of those deals, the total transaction amounts to £103m — with £43m being collected in agent and intermediary fees. Bayat was the one who moved Sarr to Watford, and even saying himself to GFFN “I don’t want to stop being an agent, I like my job a lot. I was able to sell Ismaila Sarr to Watford whilst being focused on Nantes.” His influence went to a all time high this season as he was invovled in 9 signings; Dennis, Etebo, Louza, Kucka, Sissoko, Samir, Kamara, Kalu and Kayembe.
The weirder transfers in this circus was Sven Kums signing for Watford on deadline day for £8m, immediately signing on loan for Udinese, and then sold for £5m to Anderlecht a year later; a place where Mogi had huge influence due to his relationship with Herman Van Holsbeeck. The flipside of all this is the players Watford are signing are largely good, but when you have Scott Duxbury shooting the point at almost every opportunity that Watford are a family club; dealing with someone like Mogi Bayat consistently for a number of years contradicts that very statement. Given Watford’s precarious financial position, I’m not sure giving millions and millions of pounds to a corrupt agent is a wise move, especially when he’s seemingly got the run of the place, and multiple clubs for that matter — It’s a recipe for chaos and even more court cases; maybe that is the Watford way.