Thread by @AgainstLeague3

IRAMA - PART 2

Who is behind Irama Sports – the company that’s been buying up sports grounds from under clubs?

We're back once again with the ill behaviour.

Thread:

I'm delighted to have been joined in some digging by @uglygame and, as usual, he's done the hard work and I'll be taking the credit. It's just how we roll.

Abingdon Town and Whyteleafe resigned from their leagues after their ground was bought by Irama.

According to the Athletic, the prime mover behind the business is ‘Perry Chopra’, who’s been described as ‘a US real estate developer with connections to Singapore.’

Now, there is indeed such a person. He has been connected with buying a number of old buildings over the last ten years, as well as hotels, as is described as the CEO of a company called Claremont. (He was also linked with an outstanding tax bill, presumably now settled.)

It’s notable that there doesn’t seem anywhere to be either a photo or biog of Perry Chopra and his corporate website has long since vanished and doesn’t seem to be archived anywhere.

Following the Singapore connection, there is a business registered there called Claremont Pte Ltd, which happens to share an address with Irama.

That business had also switched its registered office back and forth with a different address. That address is a fleapit hotel called… The Claremont.

In 2016, a man called Parvinder Chopra, was described as the owner of the hotel and was reported as seeking to sell it. So, could Perry perhaps be a nickname for Parvinder Chopra?

In the mid-2010s, a US company called Metertech, which was described in court as being owned by a Perry Chopra, sued British Gas for alleged patent infringement over smart meters.

About the same time, a UK company also called MeterTech Limited was set up. It had two officers, a Singaporean chartered accountant and an MD called Ross Harris, whose country of residence was also Singapore.

On LinkedIn, there is a man called Ross Harris who describes himself as General Manager of… The Claremont Pte Ltd in Singapore, the company that is owned by Perry Chopra and shares and address with Irama and a name with a hotel called The Claremont.

Now, this isn’t 100% conclusive, but it seems reasonable to assume that Perry Chopra of Irama is Parvinder Chopra. And that takes us to about the last piece of publicly available information about him.

In the 2010s, there were a number of leaks on companies involved in ‘offshore services’. Famously, the Panama Papers lifted the lid on the network of companies that wealthy people use, often perfectly legally, in tax secrecy jurisdictions to keep their financial affairs private.

An earlier 2013 leak shows an entry for Parvinder Chopra. He is linked, perfectly legally, with several hotel businesses around the world and companies in secrecy jurisdictions like Malta and the British Virgin Islands.

Portcullis TrustNet in BVI is one of the world’s largest provider of offshore services. Rivkin is a Singaporean provider of financial services.

Another business linked to Chopra is a Maltese company called Claone Limited.

Claone Limited trades as… Claremont Yachts, a yacht hire business running out of Cannes. And it happens to share a website with a business called… Yacht Irama.

While they share a website and phone number, there appears to be two yachts.

So, there’s a man - Parvinder ‘Perry’ Chopra – a US real estate developer about whom almost nothing is known, except he owns hotels and yachts, works out of Singapore, uses tax secrecy jurisdictions and, for some reason, he’s super keen to buy playing fields up and down the UK.

Irama seems to have contacted at least four parish councils with offers to buy their land, including Silloth-on-Solway (Cumbria), Fulford (York), Colkirk (Norfolk) and Baughurst (Hampshire).

It brings us back to the question: why does a wealthy guy want playing fields in the UK if, as is reported, he doesn’t intend to build on them? Well… what if he had a personal connection to the UK?

Many of you will be familiar with Companies House, an online record of UK companies.

However, Companies House is incomplete and many older companies have not been archived.

Companies House doesn’t show any recent records for a Parvinder or Perry Chopra, but there are a number of archived records from the 90s.

So perhaps Perry Chopra is a US-based British property developer who moved to the US at some point. Might account for the interest in British property, but why football?

We know that Ian Rush has said he worked "closely" with "Amar".

We know that the endorsement videos on Irama's Facebook than "Amar" for the wonderful, fabulous work he's doing.

Is there an Amar Chopra with a connection to UK football? Yes, he used to play for Gateshead and now plays for Chelsea Rovers.

https://twitter.com/GatesheadFC/status/1093243320749428737?s=20

And, last season, Amar gave a two-part interview on YouTube where he talked about his plans for the future. He mentioned this new platform he’s launched called... the iRama Sports Network.

Interview part 1:

Interview part 2:

The problems may then be ones of inexperience rather than a deliberate attempt to shift clubs to redevelop their ground. And we still don’t know exactly what Ian Rush’s role is or why he claimed there was a police investigation.

https://twitter.com/Ian_Rush9/status/1405095172208275458?s=20

From what we can tell, nothing in any of this seems illegal. But there is a troubling lack of transparency that should worry football clubs up and down the land. You could wake up one morning and find someone else owns your ground and there’s nothing you can do about it.

/ends.