THE football chairman accused of sending bungs to Harry Redknapp told a court yesterday of their rollercoaster friendship.
Milan Mandaric said he agreed to pay £4.2million a year to his “special guy” before their relationship led to “a bitter divorce”.
Mandaric told jurors: “I never had a closer relationship as a manager than I had with Harry.”
He said the £189,000 deposits for Redknapp in a Monaco bank account was “something entirely different” from football.
Both Redknapp, of Sandbanks, and Mandaric, from Oadby, Leicester-shire, deny two counts of cheating the public revenue when Redknapp was manager of Portsmouth Football Club.
Mandaric told Southwark Crown Court: “I want to do something special for Harry because he means more to me than a football manager. This was something as a friend.
“If this was something to do with employment, I would have done something entirely different.”
Redknapp, 64, joined Portsmouth – initially as a director of football – in 2001 before Mandaric asked him to take on managerial responsibilities.
Mandaric, 73, said: “Overall he was a special guy.” But their relationship “started to go a little bit uncomfortable” amid frustration over fees being paid to agents, the court heard.
The chairman added that he had lost more than £10million in one year from investments.
When asked by Redknapp about the Monaco investment, Mandaric said: “I said ‘Harry, it does not look good.
‘Actually it’s disaster all over the world’.”
Redknapp and Mandaric did not speak for a year when the manager joined Southampton in 2004, jurors heard. “It was a little bit of a bitter divorce,” Mandaric told jurors.
Mandaric will continue his evidence today.
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