Pinhas Zahavi (born August 24 1943 in Israel) is a controversial agent who has been involved in some of the most expensive (and controversial) transfer episodes of the last decade. He is registered with FIFA from his offices in Tel Aviv, but controversially he is not registered in England where he takes fees as large as £3 million per transfer. His friends include Ehud Olmert the Prime Minister of Israel, Reuven Rivlin a former Speaker of Israel’s parliament and possible future president, plus former Newcastle United manager Graeme Souness.
His sports career began when he was a writer for the Israeli tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth; the contacts he made in that position helped him to establish himself when he changed career to become an agent.
Clients he represents include:
- Rio Ferdinand
- Yakubu
- Giovani Dos santos
Transfers he has brokered include:
- Rio Ferdinand to Manchester United, July 2002, £30m
- Juan Sebastián Verón to Manchester United, July 2001, £28m
- Yakubu Aiyegbeni to Middlesbrough, July 2005, £7.5m
- Gonzalo Higuain to Real Madrid, January 2007, £10m
The Yakubu deal reportedly earned Zahavi a potential £3m fee, the largest ever disclosed in English football.
Zahavi is co-owner of Charlton, a media company which holds the rights to show many major football tournaments in the Israel including the Premiership. The Israeli public protested when many important games in the 2006 FIFA World Cup were shown only on a pay-per-view basis. Zahavi is also the sole consultant to the Hero Football Fund, set up with aims to raise £100m from private sources to buy the commercial rights to players. Committee members include former Premiership referee David Elleray and QC David Griffith-Jones, who specialises in sports law.
He helped facilitate the takeover of two English Premier League clubs by fellow associates. Firstly the purchasing of Chelsea Football Club in 2003 by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, in which he is estimated to have earned as much as £5m from the £111m the club spent on players that summer. Then more recently he facilitated the takeover of Portsmouth Football Club by French businessman Alexandre Gaydamak, the son of Arkady Gaydamak, an exiled oligarch, who owns Beitar Jerusalem. He also helped to bring Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano to West Ham United and is said to have received a large slice of the £5m agents fee.
After the takeover of Chelsea, former owner Ken Bates described Zahavi as a ‘dickhead’.
In 2005 the English Football Association recommended that Zahavi be investigated for his part in the Ashley Cole ‘tapping-up’ affair. He was also present when then-England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson met with Chelsea owner Abramovich and when Rio Ferdinand was photographed in a London restaurant with Chelsea’s Peter Kenyon at a time when his United contract was up for renewal
Following the Lord Stevens ‘bung enquiry’, Zahavi was reported to be involved in “making illicit payments” on a deal involving Fabio Rochemback and fellow agent Barry Silkman.
“Agent Pinhas Zahavi has failed to co-operate fully with the inquiry . There was an initial failure to disclose his involvement in a number of transfers but, more seriously, he has failed to provide the inquiry with complete bank statements due to the confidential nature of them. There has also been a lack of responsiveness by Zahavi. There remains questions relating to his relationship with, and payments to, licensed agent Barry Silkman, and with Silkman’s failure to initially disclose his involvement in all the transactions in which he has received fees.
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