Venables banned as company director for seven years

Terry Venables, the former England football coach, was yesterday banned from being a company director for seven years. Ian Burrell charts the spectacular fall from grace of the man who enjoyed hero status after the Euro 96 championships.

Whether as a football chairman, a karaoke bar owner or writing detective stories for television, Venables has always had an eye for money-making opportunities.

But after nearly four years of strenuously denying allegations of improper business conduct, he caved in yesterday and chose not to challenge a mountain of evidence compiled against him by the Department of Trade and Industry.

Usually always ready for the cameras with a cheeky grin, Venables did not appear at court. He had reached a settlement with DTI lawyers and agreed to be disqualified from directorship and from being concerned in forming, managing or promoting companies for seven years.

Although the evidence was not read out in court, The Independent has obtained a copy of the crucial guarantee agreement which Venables made to obtain a pounds 1m loan to buy shares in Spurs.

Venables had denied the existence of the guarantee, but the DTI was able to obtain a copy of the document, signed in August 1991, and a statement from Charles Dyer, a director of the loan firm Landhurst Leasing, who witnessed the signing.

The circumstances under which the loan was raised were central to the DTI's case which related to Venables' alleged mismanagement of four companies - London drinking club Scribes West, Edennote, Tottenham Hotspur and Tottenham Hotspur Football and Athletic Company.

Elizabeth Gloster QC, for the DTI, told Mr Justice Evans-Lombe that Venables' conduct in relation to the four companies "has been such as to make him unfit to be concerned in any way with the management of a company".

The 19 allegations set out in an agreed statement of facts amounted to serious breaches of his obligations and responsibilities as a director.

Venables, 55, did not dispute the core material facts in the statement and accepted that the conduct alleged was of "such seriousness as to render him unfit".

News of the disqualification prompted a statement from the competition and consumer affairs minister, Nigel Griffiths, who said: "We recognise his great achievement in football coaching, but even our national heroes cannot be allowed to fall below accepted standards of probity when they enter the business world."

Since Venables took England to the semi-finals of the Euro 96 championships he has suffered a succession of humiliations.

Yesterday's court hearing stems from his split with Alan Sugar, with whom he ran Tottenham for two years until 1993. The pair have become bitter rivals. In October 1996, Venables was ordered by a court to pulp all remaining copies of his autobiography and pay pounds 100,001 in damages to Sugar, the Spurs chairman, after a libel action. Venables tried to claim a victory as most of the books had already been sold.

Last October, Venables was denounced as a perjurer by Judge Timothy Pontius who accused him of "deliberately and dishonestly" misleading a jury, when giving evidence on behalf of his right-hand man Eddie Ashby, who was jailed for four months.

In November 1996, Venables became national coach of Australia but his dream of taking them to the World Cup failed as they were knocked out by Iran in the final qualifying round.

At the same time he had taken control of First Division Portsmouth, paying just pounds 1 for a majority share option.

By the time he left the club last week, it was in disarray, losing pounds 150,000 a month and bottom of the league. Venables, who rarely attended matches but had taken a pounds 300,000 "performance" bonus, claimed an extra pounds 220,000 as a pay-off.

Earlier this week, senior FA officials met lawyers to discuss whether Venables and other senior football figures should face disciplinary proceedings following an investigation into whether unofficial "bungs" were paid as commission on transfer deals.