An Italian involved in corruption - who’dve thought it?

To most Britons, Fabio Capello is known as a saviour of English football, who enjoys the occasional televised lapdance. To the Italian treasury, however, he is renowned for a lengthy history of tax evasion, financial deceit and eyebrow-raising offshore bank accounts.

Capello’s battle with the Italian authorities dates back to 1999, when he claimed to be a resident of a Swiss tax haven called Campione d’Italia. When he failed to recall the address of his studio flat in court, he signed a false residency declaration and paid a €2,300 fine.

The authorities’ suspicions were aroused once again towards the end of his spate with Roma, when the club paid €2m to a company named Sport 3000 for a range of Fabio Capello fragrances, scarves and designer items.

Sport 3000 turned out to be a subsidiary of the ‘Capello Family Trust’, an offshore holding company based in tax-friendly Guernsey and owned by England’s current manager. The items were kept under lock and key by customs officers for two years, and eventually destroyed. It was discovered that Roma agreed to purchase the smellies and designer tatt from Capello as a means of giving him a ‘low tax’ bonus on his salary

Governing body interest in MLB-style luxury tax policy

As part of their unfaltering quest to dilute the power of big spending English clubs, UEFA are said to be interested in introducing a Major League Baseball-style luxury tax policy as part of their ‘Financial Fair Play’ campaign. The Associated Press explains:

The MLB system works by taxing free-spending clubs on all they spend above a set payroll. If the luxury tax idea found favor, big spending soccer clubs would have to pay their tax before being allowed to play in the Champions League and the second-tier UEFA Cup, renamed the Europa League next season.

Among the clubs who would suffer most from this new proposal are Manchester Utd and Chelsea, who operate with huge wage bills and equally huge debts. The money collected from these taxes would be distributed around the league - last season, for example, the New York Yankees were forced to dish out over £20m to their rivals.

Obviously upset at the prospect of paying the wages of the rest of the Premier League, Chelsea chief exec Peter Kenyon made his views

As net pay decreases, so will top European talent

In order to pull the UK back from the brink of financial apocalypse, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has revealed some risky plans in his pre-budget report. One bail out strategy is to introduce a new tax band of 45 per cent on earnings over £150,000 from 2011. This seems like a perfectly reasonable method of keeping the economy afloat, but it could have an adverse effect on the Premiership.

Cristiano Ronaldo currently earns a gross of £6.24m per year, on which he pays 40 per cent on earnings after £37,400 (which is only around two days work for him!). Under the new plans, he will pay an extra £304,500, roughly the cost of

England’s stern new gaffer has run into a little tax difficulty

The Italian tax detectives have been pointing their magnifying glasses at the bank accounts of Fabio Capello recently, reports Milan’s Il Giornale. Mr Capello, a one-time employee of Juventus, a club whose enthusiasm for football took a back seat to their love of corruption for many years, is being looked at for “suspected tax evasion.”

The manager’s lawyer son Pierfilippo said,