Russia's courts have frozen the bank accounts of Premier League team Amkar Perm due to an unpaid $1.1 million debt to a former club president, a respected business newspaper reported Tuesday.
Amkar, a top-flight side since 2004, are locked in a legal dispute with former president Valery Chuprakov, who is demanding the return funds he plowed into the club during his time in charge.
The club is pleading that Chuprakov accept repayment in installments rather than in a single tranche, which represents more than half of Amkar’s budget for the season.
“We can’t pay off the debt in one payment, because we don’t currently have the means to do so, therefore we’ll press for the opportunity to pay in installments,” Gennady Shilov, the current president who succeeded Chuprakov in December 2010, told RIA Novosti.
The Kommersant business daily said Tuesday that courts had blocked Amkar's bank accounts pending the conflict's resolution.
News of the accounts freeze comes on the same day as Shilov announced he had resigned as president of the club's main private sponsor, Mineral Fertilizers, which set up the club in 1994. Shilov insisted this would not squeeze the club further, but it revived doubts over its viability.
“No one is talking about reducing the funding [from Mineral Fertilizers] yet,” he said.
Money problems prompted Amkar to submit their resignation from the Premier League, but the club was saved just six weeks before the start of the season after the management secured minimum funding through the regional government.
Amkar also claim they should not have to pay around $320,000 of the total because they believed Chuprakov’s loan to have been interest-free.
“We don’t agree with Chuprakov’s intent to demand interest from the club, but he’s not likely to drop this demand,” Shilov said.
Amkar, currently four points clear of the relegation zone in 12th place in the 16-team Russian Premier League, are best known abroad for a 3-2 aggregate defeat to Fulham in August 2009 during the London club’s charge to the final of the Europa League.
Two of the teams below them, FC Volga and Tom Tomsk, are also in financial trouble and were banned from signing new players Monday due to unpaid wages.
