Southwark Crown Court, with its bare plaster walls, threadbare carpets and mice, is a world away from the private members’ clubs, exclusive restaurants and overseas hideaways where football’s biggest names are used to speaking.
And yet it was in the cramped Court 10, where the ‘t’ is missing from the sign above the door, that former Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia gave her testimony, football agent Saif Alrubie decided that attack was the best form of defense and Barry Silkman, with jet black hair that looked suspiciously like it came from a bottle, produced a crowd-pleasing cameo.
The drama wasn’t just about those in court, as Kia Joorabchian, the closest thing to a bona fide ‘super cop’, let down the prosecutor by boarding a private jet to America the night before his due date. to appear as a witness.
In his closing address, barrister Matthew Radstone turned to the jury and said: “It is unbelievable that you witnessed this at Southwark Crown Court, that someone got on a private jet and flew to the United States at the moment he was murdered. for giving evidence.”
Members of the public and journalists were able to walk in and out of the courtroom at their leisure during Alrubie’s trial because he sent an allegedly threatening email to Granovskaia. They heard how former Chelsea defender Kurt Zouma had been paid £4.1 million just for joining West Ham United and how Alrubie compared his arrest to that of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar when he had apparently tried to return to London to watch the film. The Queen’s funeral on television.
The jury was told that Alrubie had said in his interview with police: “That I was arrested from a plane as if I was Pablo Escobar, after not having slept for 24 hours, and that I was thrown into a prison cell for five hours . , I’m not very happy about it… if I were to avoid it, if I were to even avoid it, would I be coming on a plane to return to London to attend the Queen’s funeral with my father and mother live?
By the end of the trial, Alrubie had managed to obtain the names of Escobar, Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Putin. Not quite the perfect hat-trick.
On the same day the jury heard that he had compared himself to a monarchist Escobar, Alrubie later told his lawyer: “I am sending an email to a woman who is the right hand of Roman Abramovich, one of the largest Russian businessmen in the world. world. I’m just Saif Alrubie… I’m a small cop.
“I don’t think I would be stupid enough to threaten anyone, let alone someone with the power of Roman Abramovich (behind them). That would just be me on a suicide mission. I’m not that stupid.”
For anyone unfamiliar with Abramovich, Alrubie took another swing at what he must have thought was an open target on day four in court, saying: “He is a close ally of Vladimir Putin, sanctioned by the British government.”
The reference to Putin was described as “cartoonish” by prosecutor Arizuna Asante during his closing speech to the jury.
Just listening to Granovskaia’s voice would have been a new experience for most Chelsea supporters around the world, who had not heard her speak at Stamford Bridge for more than a decade.
The jury not only had an audience with someone who had been one of the most private figures in football, but also received printed copies of some of her WhatsApp and email messages.
Granovskaia’s time on the witness stand lasted five hours, including three breaks. She told the jury that Chelsea’s current owners put her on gardening leave from June 2022 until the end of that summer’s transfer window, when she officially left, and continued to refer to the club as ‘me, us and our’.
When Granovskaia was asked in court how she felt after receiving Alrubie’s email, the woman so often cast as football’s ‘iron lady’ said: ‘Very uncomfortable would be an understatement. I felt physically threatened.”
Granovskaia apologized to the court with a smile as her phone buzzed in her handbag, and there was no attempt by Granovskaia to downplay her history with former Chelsea owner Abramovich, despite the fact that she must have known it would be seized by the defense would lay.
Granovskaia described how she moved from Moscow to London in 2004 after Abramovich bought Chelsea and began working in personal wealth management and ‘back office administration’ at Stamford Bridge. Going “from commercial activities and catering to at some point matchday activity, then player transfers and player activity.”
It was in 2012 that Granovskaia said it “made sense” to give her the official position of director responsible for football. “Almost everything football-related, I was in charge,” she explained. “Everyone associated with football reported to me, including the medical sector, and I was responsible for the majority of player contracts, player buying and player selling.”
Alrubie later told the court that Granovskaia liked to spend her summers in the south of France. He shared a photo of him with her and Sahr Senesie, Antonio Rudiger’s agent, which was taken in 2017 at the exclusive Cap-Eden-Roc hotel – described in a Telegraph review as a ‘movie star retreat’.
Silkman, a Ric Flair figure from the world of football agents, missed only the walk-on music of WWE wrestling as he strode into Court 10 with a huge grin on his face to testify as a witness.
The former Manchester City footballer known as ‘Silks’ – a prominent figure in the normally secretive business of football deals for the past thirty years – came face to face with the more conventionally educated side of the courtroom.
In front of Judge David Tomlinson, the court heard how Silkman avoided discussions with West Ham United vice-chairman Karren Brady. Silkman also joked that fans at London Stadium, the spacious former Olympic venue, will need binoculars to see the action from the stands.
Only an intervention from Judge Tomlinson stopped ‘agent Silks’ from revealing West Ham’s precise wage bill and talking himself into more potential trouble with Baroness Brady.
The judge seemed less impressed with Alrubie during his cross-examination by prosecutor Asante, whose tactic, in football terms, appeared to be to let the suspect have the ball and see whether or not he would get into trouble.
Alrubie ran straight into the attack, trying to ask his own questions of Mr Asante, telling the prosecutor to ‘keep it relevant’ more than once and eventually prompting Judge Tomlinson to ‘Stop, stop, stop ‘ and warn him to stop being like that. so ‘confrontational’.
When Alrubie apologized for Mr. Asante’s “French” after an excerpt from his interview with police, in which the defendant described himself as “f—– off,” was quoted, the prosecutor quickly shot back: “More your French than mine.”
In his closing address, Mr Asante said: “Mr Alrubie seems very nice and accommodating until he believes that you disagree with his position or his belief that you owe him money. He becomes abusive, threatening and aggressive.”
Mr Radstone responded by telling the jury: “Whether you like him or not, or the way he has behaved, this is not a moral court.”
There were tears from Alrubie as he left the dock, and from family and friends in the public gallery after the jury read out their ‘not guilty’ verdict just before 1pm on day six of the trial.
But with Alrubie telling the jury last week that he would be filing a civil case against Granovskaia, this might not be the last time we see them in court.