quoteRaikkonen warns he may miss last two races as Lotus “haven’t paid a single Euro”
Kimi Raikkonen has warned Lotus the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will be his last drive for them if they do not pay him his outstanding wages.
Raikkonen told reporters in Abu Dhabi “I haven’t been paid a single Euro this year” by the team.
“It’s an unfortunate thing because I understand the team’s side of it,” said Raikkonen.
“But sometimes when you been put in a position and told different stories and people thinks that you don’t work for the team or you don’t care what happens to them it’s not exactly true if I’m doing it without being really being paid.”
Raikkonen said he had considered not racing because of the situation. He has already agreed to drive for Ferrari next and said earlier in the season the shortfall in payments from Lotus was part of the reason why.
He indicated he had addressed the matter with the team again in Abu Dhabi, saying: “Hopefully we have a bit better understanding on certain issues what has been going through the whole year.”
“I mean unfortunately we end up in that kind of situation and is not really anything to do with me. In the end we try to enjoy this team but on the other side it’s a business and if you don’t respect on that side you can end up in this kind of situation.”
Raikkonen added the radio row between him and trackside operations director Alan Permane was not a significant factor in his warning to the team or his refusal to show up for media engagements yesterday:
“In the end it has happened and it doesn’t change anything any more. But I mean that’s not the reason why I wasn’t here yesterday, it’s part of it but I wouldn’t say that this is a big part of it.”
Quote: icemaid wrote in post #574Let's hope Kimi is paid something before the final 2 races. If this is done I am sure he would race.
F***ing Lopez please do something our friends here want to enjoy the Austin race!
so much for thinking of us, ..
The race will be enjoyable, regardless if Kimi comes or not. Of course, I would prefer for Kimi to be there!
But Kimi is correct: there is a business aspect to this sport. And one side is clearly not meeting any agreements in the contract.
Personally, I think Kimi brought Robertson to Abu Dhabi to play "hardball" (as we all it the USA) with Lotus. This was a pre-calculated plan in my opinion. I think Kimi will race regardless if he's payed. I'm glad Kimi is sticking up for himself.
quoteBouillier has had his most difficult autumn as a team manager The Racing Nerd November 2, 2013
F1 | Turun Sanomat 00:03 | 0
On Friday evening Eric Boullier admitted straight that for him the season has been really difficult to manage.
How big was the chance that Kimi Räikkönen would not have raced in this race?
– He is here. That’s the only thing that matters, Bouillier said.
Then what about the races in USA and Brazil if the contract disputes don’t get fixed?
– I can’t comment anything else than it’s Gerard Lopez and Kimi Räikkönen who agree on those things.
Was Räikkönen too emotional at this moment?
– I won’t say anything to that. Of course Kimi too has feelings. He is not an emotionless man, he is just a normal human being.
The story together with Räikkönen which started with success is now ending in a sad way.
– I would say yes and no. Of course it would have been good to continue the nice story to the end, but there are reasons why Kimi is leaving, Boullier said.
Ruthless lack of money.
– We still wait for one investor to close the deal with us. If that doesn’t happen then we have to look for other solutions, Bouillier said about the situation.
Back in the day, when they were still a midfield team and occasionally outscored by their own farm team, the Red Bull crew were the jokesters in the paddock. They would send DC up to collect one of their rare podium trophies wearing a superman cape, entertain the world with hilarious press releases or (in the case of Christian Horner) would be seen jumping naked into the pool at Monaco after losing a bet.
Of course, once shit got serious with multiple championships and stuff, so got the team and for a time it looked like Team Lotus would take up the vacant position of the class clown with their funny posts on twatter and faceborg or their ‘leave me alone’ t-shirts. Yesterday we finally learned, just how rotten the state of things is in Lotus-land.
On Thursday Kimi Räikkönen was AWOL and the team remained remarkably blasé about it, which confused quite a few people as it looked like outright retaliatory action by the Iceman for the effed up strategy of India and the late-race exchange of profanities. As it should later turned out, the team was still trying to convince the Finn to show up at all. As we would later learn straight from the Iceman’s mouth this is, because Lotus haven’t paid a single penny of Kimi’s salary yet. There was talk about a payment earlier this year, but it turned out it was the money they owed him from last year.
What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing, Lotus? Which part of the word ‘contract’ is so hard to understand? I can almost hear the communists and otherwise talentless crawl out of the undergrowth proclaiming that Kimi earns Millions a year and therefore shouldn’t make a fuzz about waiting on his vulgar amount of currency a little longer. So friggin’ what? That’s not the point here. Had you paid more attention in school you could’ve become a bus driver. It’s a simple question of honouring an agreement and especially not putting up an Iraqi Information Minister routine if for any reason you can’t fulfil your end of the bargain.
Getting into financial trouble in this economic climate is neither a surprise nor is it neccesserily a shameful thing. If there’s one bunch, who has more attention to detail than us Germans, it’s the Swiss. And if there’s one bunch, who knows how to handle money, it’s the Swiss again. But even with these favourable conditions, team Sauber ran into bad financial trouble this year. Unlike Lotus, however, their press releases were written by someone competent, not by Baghdad Bob. They let Hülkenberg terminate his contract, effectively allowing him to leave the team at a moments notice, should the call from another team come. And they were quite transparent about it.
What did Lotus do? They continued selling heaps of male bovine excrement to the world in the form of two rutting rabbits, insinuating that Kimi had bent them over the nearest piece of furniture to administer a jolly ol’ anal seeing-to by leaving the team. Whom in the wild world of sports were you kidding, Lotus? Newsflash: If you don’t pay your best employee for a whole year, you don’t have any right to be upset if he walks out on you. I don’t know how things work in her Majesty’s Empire, but in most of Europe obtaining goods or services by fraud is a criminal offense. Kimi kept on collecting points, podium and wins despite not being paid for it and when he finally has had enough and tells the world about it, you get all upset and vulgar in the team radio? I think the only ones with a right to be po’ed are Kimi himself and the public, who now learns that you’ve been selling them ruminant turds for a full season.
The Quantum deal to take over a percentage of the Lotus F1 has been completed – and the team has secured not only the services of Kimi Raikkonen for the rest of the season, but also the future of the team. Mansoor Ijaz, who leads the consortium says that he wants to sign Nico Hulkenberg. Quantum has an option to take over the team but Ijaz is not saying when that would be actioned.
Quantum says its Lotus Formula 1 investment deal is done By Jonathan Noble Sunday, November 3rd 2013, 18:39 GMT
Lotus's long-term Formula 1 future received a major boost on Sunday night when investment group Quantum Motorsports said its deal to buy into the team was complete.
After a weekend when questions about Lotus's financial state emerged following Kimi Raikkonen's threat to not race because he had not been paid, major progress was made in the much heralded agreement.
Mansoor Ijaz, who is the head of the Quantum Motorsports consortium that includes Middle East investors, said that his company had now completed its side of the contract and just needed final approval from team owner Genii Capital.
"There is no question that the deal is definitely happening," he said, when asked by AUTOSPORT about the latest situation.
"I will even go out as far as to say that it has now been completed from our side in terms of what has to be done."
Quantum plans to buy a 35 per cent stake in the team through new shares issued by majority owner Genii.
There are also options for it to potentially take over the entire running of the team in the future, should Genii wish to scale down its involvement.
"We have options - I won't go into the details of those options - but the options do allow us in a fixed amount of time to take control of the team later on," Ijaz added. "We will do that in a way that is very co-ordinated with our partners at Genii."
APOLOGY TO RAIKKONEN
Ijaz revealed that the major investment deal will allow Lotus to pay off its debts, pay off suppliers – and also settle its pay dispute with Raikkonen.
As AUTOSPORT revealed earlier, Raikkonen has now reached a deal with Lotus to sort out his issues and will now race in the final two grands prix of the 2013 season.
Ijaz said he was sorry for allowing the matter to get so out of hand after meeting with Raikkonen's manager Steve Robertson on Saturday night.
"We have apologised to Kimi," he said. "We intend to not only make sure that they are made whole, and then some, but we are intending also to compensate our employees and management team for having taken it on the chin from you guys [the media] in recent weeks."
Lotus has not yet officially confirmed the completion of the Quantum deal, but team principal Eric Boullier said on Sunday that he hoped an announcement could be made in the next 48 hours.
"I will not comment on this yet," he said. "I can't say anything yet. I think by Tuesday. I certainly hope so.
Seems that Mr Mansoor Ijaz was involved in some kind of huge fraud investigation...the article was posted by Brenda in racingnerds/fb, its long, so i'll just put the direct link here
i just hope that Kimi gets his money and the people working at lotus too....
edit: the link has problems, so i'll have to copy paste...
quoteMansoor Ijaz ordered to pay $1.4m to bank in fraud case
Special Correspondent, Feb18, 2012
NEW YORK: The credibility of Mansoor Ijaz, the principal instigator of the memo scandal, came in for another hit with the surfacing of court documents that show a European Bank accusing him of running a one-man business operation and obtaining loans that he was later unable to pay back on time.
Documents show that the Supreme Court of the State of New York Judge Charles E Ramos issued a judgement against Mansoor Ijaz on September 25, 2010, after Banca Sammarinese di Investimento (BSI) of San Marino filed a suit for the recovery of a loan obtained by Ijaz.
The suggestions of financial impropriety follow the emergence last month of a video in which Mansoor Ijaz acted as a commentator on nude women’s wrestling. These scandals are in addition to his contradictory claims about the memo and his inability to produce any email or BBM message that directly links any Pakistani official to the memo he admits to have drafted and sent to US officials on May 9, 2011.
Legal experts wonder how such credibility issues would allow Mansoor Ijaz to convince the memo inquiry commission that he is telling the truth about the memo’s origins when he is the sole witness in the matter and the ‘corroborative material’ in the form of BBM messages and telephone logs he presented were so heavily dependent on his personal account and explanation.
In its filings before the court, BSI Bank of San Marino said that it had opened credit lines in favour of Ijaz and his companies – The Ijaz Group Inc and Aquarius – in 2007 and 2008 and Mansoor Ijaz had pledged shares of his companies as collateral, which later turned out to have no value.
The case raises questions about Mansoor Ijaz’s smoke and mirrors approach to business and his using the impression of high-level political connections to obtain money while speaking of his immense wealth to develop political ties.
The Banca Sammarinese di Investimento (BSI) of San Marino told the New York Court that Mansoor Ijaz’s companies The Ijaz Group and Aquarius were only a cover for him and did not really have any current business that the bank could identify or recover money against.
“Defendants Ijaz Group and Aquarius ignored all corporate formalities in the formation and operation of such entities. Ijaz was the only officer and director of the Ijaz Group. Ijaz transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars borrowed by the Ijaz Group from plaintiff (the bank) to himself. Ijaz considered the Ijaz Group’s credit line his personal line of credit,” it said.
BSI’s lawyers Herzfeld and Rubin PC said in the complaint on behalf of their client that “Ijaz used the lines of credit plaintiff had extended to Ijaz Group and Aquarius for his personal needs, including payment of mortgages and brokerage account fees and used said lines of credit after his personal line of credit had reached its final limit.” The lawyers representing the BSI also said, “Ijaz was the only shareholder, officer and director of Aquarius. Aquarius never entered into any contracts nor did it have any employees. Aquarius never filed tax returns.”
Although the BSI suit was a civil one to recover money, it included charges of fraud that could be the subject of separate criminal proceedings, though none were initiated. “Ijaz used control and domination over the Ijaz Group and Aquarius to commit fraud and to breach his legal duty and the legal duty of the controlled corporations to repay all monies due to the bank by such corporations,” BSI bank told the New York court. It said that Mansoor Ijaz’s representation to the bank was “false, wilful, fraudulent and intended for BSI to rely on it.”
BSI’s filing in the court on June 6, 2010, said, “Ijaz owes BSI 661,972.16 euros plus interest from October 1, 2008. The Ijaz Group Inc owes BSI $873,692.46 on account No 470 and 1,942.80 euros on account No 469 plus interest from October 1, 2008. Aquarius owes to BSI 214,068.23 euros on account No 471 and 130.36 euros on account No 798 for a total of 214,198.59 euros plus interest from October 1, 2008.”
Mansoor Ijaz accepted his borrowing from BSI to the tune of 648,130 euros plus interest from August 8, 2008. He also acknowledged that the balance due by himself, The Ijaz Group Inc and Aquarius, was 1.46 million euros plus interest from August 8, 2008. According to the BSI, Mansoor Ijaz was the “alter ego” of The Ijaz Group and Aquarius, as he fully controlled these entities. “Ijaz exercised such dominion and control over the Ijaz Group and Aquarius and the monies plaintiff loaned to those entities in order to commit a fraud against the plaintiff.”
Earlier, when the BSI borrowings started to fall into default, Mansoor Ijaz talked big much as he had done since his appearance on the Pakistani media scene since the beginning of the Memo scandal, which he started and which seems to rest solely on his narration and explanation. In an email for BSI directors dated March 10, 2008, Ijaz spoke of launching a $50 million project called Aquarius Towers Las Vegas, even though just two years later (until the New York case) he had not even paid back the $1.4 million he owed the BSI.
In a bragging tone that is now identified with his personality, Mansoor Ijaz said in that email, “Definitive contracts to fund Phase-1 of the project (US $50 million) were signed in Las Vegas on February 20, 2008. The investor is a large Indian family that has real estate investments around the world, including over 40 apartment units in Las Vegas’ newest condominium towers, Dubai and India. The head of the family is an important political personality from the state where the family resides. My partner is the family representative. The investor’s funds are resident in Switzerland and we are presently going through the necessary due diligence phase with our bank.”
Court documents do not show that Ijaz ever identified his investors or ever provided documents to the BSI that confirmed their identity or plans to invest.
Ijaz also wrote, “The same investor, due to its close ties with Tata Motors in India, has chosen to invest $10 million in our planned launch of a company to develop the world’s most energy efficient power-trains. Definitive contracts for this deal were signed on February 25, 2008, in Orange County, California.”
Once again, revealing a pattern of half-truths and using partial reality, Mansoor Ijaz offered no substantive evidence to the BSI bank of having the investors’ backing.
Ijaz also spoke in his email of the need “to protect my political reputation and future role in American politics”, indicating that he had originally obtained the loans by impressing BSI officials with his political contacts as established by his op-ed writing and claims of acting as unofficial intermediary between governments.
New York State Judge Charles Ramos ordered in favour of the plaintiffs after the parties “agreed to entry of judgement in favour of plaintiff” and ordered Mansoor Ijaz to pay $1.474 million to the BSI, whose address is Via Consiglio Dei Sessanta n99, Dogana, Republic of San Marino.
Interestingly, the address of Mansoor Ijaz’s companies is the same as his residential address in the United States, 100 United Nations Plaza, New York. Ijaz’s ex-wife and daughter currently reside at that address.
This is not the first time that Mansoor Ijaz has linked his political activities with his business. On April 29, 1997, The Washington Post published an article by David B Ottaway titled ‘Democratic Fund-Raiser Pursues Agenda on Sudan’, which spoke of Mansoor Ijaz touting his political connections and covert role as intermediary between the US and a foreign government. “Ijaz, who displays photographs in his New York office of himself with Clinton and Gore, acknowledged during six hours of interviews the leverage his fund-raising provided in gaining ‘political prominence’ in Washington for the advancement of his causes,” said the article.
It quoted Mansoor Ijaz as saying, “Everybody knows who I am,” adding “Ijaz also acknowledged his commercial interests in effecting reconciliation between the United States and Sudan. As chairman of Crescent Investment Management, a New York firm that he said handles a $2.7 billion investment portfolio – much of it on behalf of Middle East governments – Ijaz said he is particularly interested in new oil field development. Sudan, with moderate reserves estimated at 3.5 billion barrels, is expected to become a petroleum exporter soon and Ijaz said he hopes to manage some of Khartoum's foreign investment of oil profits.”
It is not known what is the current status of Crescent Investment Management and why Mansoor Ijaz established The Ijaz Group and Aquarius if his previous company was a successful running concern.
quoteMansoor Ijaz: a super spy struggling with debt
By Our Correspondent, March 17, 2012
ISLAMABAD: The first day of cross-examination of the memo issue’s principal instigator, Mansoor Ijaz, revealed an unusual profile of the man – a super spy having ties with two-dozen intelligence agencies around the world over a career of 25 years, grappling with litigation over unpaid debt in the United States, in some cases over relatively small amounts.
Zahid Bukhari, counsel for former ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani, pounded Ijaz with questions that Memo Commission head, Justice Faez Issa, initially deemed irrelevant to the memo investigation. But the entire memo affair depended on Mansoor Ijaz’s credibility, Bukhari said, and emphasised that the man could not be trusted and needed to be questioned.
While Justice Issa and Mansoor Ijaz wanted to focus solely on the record of BlackBerry Messenger chat messages exchanged between Ijaz and Haqqani, the lawyer wanted to establish that anything put on the record by Ijaz with his own explanation and interpretation must not be accepted prima facie. After all, the chat messages are either cryptic or say nothing explicit pertaining to the memo, he said. Ijaz’s efforts to link the former ambassador’s chitchat with him to the memo he sent to the US joint chiefs of staff chairman in May 2011 could not succeed, he added.
Ijaz confirmed, in response to a question asked by Bukhari, that he had ‘links’ with two dozen intelligence services around the world, though he refused to identify the countries whose intelligence services were his friends. He also refused to explain the nature of his contacts. Ijaz acknowledged introducing Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Yasin Malik to the then deputy chief (later chief) of India’s RAW, but refuted the assertion that it had been done under false pretences.
“Malik is a liar,” Ijaz said in the same tone in which he describes Haqqani, former US National Security Adviser General James Jones and almost anybody who questions his account of events. But he seemed to be proud of his links with India’s RAW – a fact unlikely to be appreciated by those of his sponsors who see him as somehow defending Pakistan’s interest through revelations about the memo.
Ijaz claimed his secret intelligence-related activities were undertaken as a “private citizen of the US” and he claimed that he paid for his part-time spy work from his own pocket. But Bukhari proceeded to question Ijaz in detail about several judgments against him in New York courts that showed him as lagging behind or unable to pay his debts.
Spies or people with credible links with intelligence services usually avoid litigation. Mansoor Ijaz does not have the kind of money he claims to have, raising questions about why then he acts as a man with intelligence ties, acting behind the scenes to write memos that are routinely discarded.
“Ijaz is an agent of several intelligence agencies and enemies of Pakistan,” Bukhari said, adding he would prove all his charges. “The Memo is Mansoor Ijaz’s brainchild,” he added.
Ijaz admitted that he had defaulted on a payment of $1.4 million to Banca Sammarinese de Ivestimento (BSI) of San Marino and had been charged with fraud by the bank in a New York court. He said the fraud charges were false, giving a long explanation that blamed the bank for lending him more than it was allowed to. He said the court judgement simply asked him to pay the money he accepted he owed, and did not pronounce him criminal in the fake case against him. But Ijaz accepted he had still not paid the $1.4 million he owed Banca Sammarinese, though the court judgement was made in 2010.
Ijaz also admitted he owed $2 million on his apartment to a mortgage company in New York, where his ex-wife and daughter live, and that he was under court orders about another $160,000 on account of the same property, but that was “a family matter” so he would not discuss it. Bukhari read a list of other court orders against Ijaz over non-payment of various dues, but the self-proclaimed tycoon said he did not know of all cases against him as a trustee handled his financial matters. He did not deny the inference that he faced many challenges to his tycoon image.
Bukhari, however, did not ask the obvious questions, “If you face court orders over unpaid debts, why and how do you spend your time writing memos on foreign policy and pursuing claims relating to them? And what is that career of 25 years that renders you incapable of paying your debts, while pretending to be a citizen diplomat?”
The counsel asked Ijaz about an article he had written on May 3, 2011, in the Financial Times, in which he had accused the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of protecting and backing Osama bin Laden. Ijaz accepted he did so, without seeing the irony of how, after saying that, he could justify working with ISI Director General Ahmed Shuja Pasha to condemn Husain Haqqani. But such contradictions do not seem to bother Ijaz. Bukhari made the point that Ijaz accused the ISI to get his name in the media and then agreed to cooperate with it, again for publicity.
“Pakistan and ISI acted like ‘babysitter’ for Osama Bin Laden,” Ijaz read out from his article. “Pakistan has almost certainly acted as a knowing babysitter, watching over the terror master so he (Osama bin Laden) would do no further harm –as long as the babysitting fees were sufficient and recurring,” he continued.
Ijaz tried to turn the tables on Haqqani by saying the former ambassador had agreed with the contents of the said article, once again referring to BlackBerry chats as evidence.
He also said at one point that “Haqqani, on at least three to four occasions during telephonic conversations, had told me that he (Haqqani) knew everything in my CIA file,” suggesting the former ambassador had his own intelligence links. But like many of his claims about alleged telephone conversations, this one too is unlikely to be proved.
Bukhari also pointed out that most of Ijaz’s articles were against Pakistan’s nuclear programme and its intelligence agencies, which brings into question his motive in accusing President Zardari and Ambassador Haqqani over the memo issue.
Ijaz’s confrontational style on this subject is unlikely to win him many friends among Pakistanis. On another matter, he backtracked from his earlier claim and said whatever he had stated about the US raid in Abbottabad on May 2, might not be correct. “I received a secret transcript, which I forwarded to the commission,” Ijaz said, adding that he was not sure about the authenticity of the information of the said transcript. But the willingness to present as evidence an unauthenticated document he got in the email, where many hoaxes routinely circulate, do not make Mansoor Ijaz seem very credible either.
Ijaz had said in his testimony on March 1 that there was possibility of a military coup in Pakistan after the United States (US) military operation in Abbottabad and Husain Haqqani’s fears in that regard were not baseless. He had also said that he had a ‘transcript’, what he then claimed to be an intelligence report, carried the data of conversation between Pakistani air traffic control and the pilots of US helicopters that carried out Abbottabad Operation. But now he acknowledges the document is unauthentic.
In the course of the cross-examination, Ijaz ended up supporting Haqqani’s assertion that he (Haqqani) could not present his BlackBerry PIN code without finding his discarded handsets. This led to a chuckle in the courtroom, with Haqqani remarking that “at least on this issue Ijaz is telling the truth.”
Bukhari wondered aloud why Ijaz retained his discarded BlackBerry sets even after having replaced them. “Unless he planned to use them for the purpose of making accusations, why would anyone retain and backup BBM chat on a handset that he had stopped using?” he asked. Most people throw or give away an old mobile phone handset once they acquire a new one. “Why didn’t Ijaz?”