This is pretty serious stuff..........
Bury staff missing thousands of pounds from pension pots
Martyn Ziegler, Chief Sports Reporter
September 4 2019, 5:00pm, The Times
Bury were expelled from the Football League last week and police are conducting a fraud inquiryDAVE HOWARTH/PA
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Tens of thousands of pounds of pensions contributions taken from staff members’ salaries by Bury Football Club appear to have disappeared, it can be revealed.
The latest development in the financial scandal surrounding Bury, who were expelled from the Football League last week, comes after
police confirmed they have launched a fraud inquiry into the club.
Two former academy employees at the club have told
The Times that their pension pots only contain a few pounds despite two years of paying pension contributions. The employer contributions to match the staff contributions have not been paid into their pension funds either. The club has admitted to a pensions deficit of £100,000.
Andy Tower, who was the Bury academy’s head of coaching until last week, and the former head academy physio Josh Birtwistle said they believed all the academy and first team staff were in the same boat.
Tower said that he was alerted to the failure to pass on the contributions last year when the former owner Stewart Day was still in charge. No pension contributions have been made since Steve Dale took over the club in December.
Tower said: “Not only have we not received contributions from the club, but the payments that were taken from our salaries have not been paid in there either. This goes back two years and there is just £5 in my pension fund when there should be more than £2,500.
“It goes back to the previous regime and lots of people raised it at different times. The club’s explanation was always that, ‘We know there’s an issue and we are looking into it but the money is there.’ But if the money is there, where exactly is it?”
Birtwistle, who is also missing around two years of pension payments, has only £3.63 in his pension fund. He said he had raised an internal complaint earlier this year and eventually had to take time off work due to the stress before leaving the club in May.
He said: “Eventually I realised I had to get out of there. I had previously worked at Leyton Orient when it had been going through its problems and I saw all the same warning signs. Everyone I knew among the academy staff and the first-team staff are missing contributions.”
Birtwistle said he sent five emails to Inquesta, the insolvency practitioners supervising the company voluntary arrangement (CVA) which was proposed to cut Bury’s debts, before receiving a response that it would take six to eight weeks for it to investigate.
The pension issue was admitted by Inquesta’s Steven Wiseglass in his CVA proposal to creditors on June 21.
He said that “No payments have been made into the [pension] scheme for a significant period of time” and that “the club has estimated it to be a deficit of £100,000”.
Wiseglass and Dale did not respond when contacted for comment.
