The Chesterfield story is one of a fairly obvious and clumsy fraud by an unintelligent criminal. The Pompey situation would have George Smiley walk away, scratching his head.
The club was bought out of administration by Milan Mandaric in 1998. Under him they prospered and were promoted to the Premiership in 2003. Under manager Harry Redknapp the club spent beyond its means to achieve success; Mandaric tolerated Redknapp's excesses and funded this for as long as he could, but sold the club to a Russian named Alexandre Gaydamak in 2006. Gaydamak was really no more than a front for his dad, a chap named Arcadi Gaydamak, Russian-Israeli an arms dealer who is wanted by the French for gun-running to Angola.
Make yourselves a cup of tea; I'll see you in five minutes.
Five minutes later...
Welcome back. For some reason, Alexandre Gaydemak's dad was sued in the Israeli courts for something like £17 million by a bloke named Balraim Chainrai, who won. It seems to me that Chainrai (who reckons to be a Hong-Kong based electrical products guy) was "given" Pompey in settlement of this debt, after Gaydemak was allowed to send in a clutch of unsavoury individuals to asset-strip the thing, including the discredited lawyer Daniel Azougy. There is no sign that a sum of money ever changed hands after the Israeli court case. Once Azougy had done his work and the remainder was worth "only" £17 million, Chainrai took possession of it and the club was "sold" to an Arab named Suleiman Al-Fahim, who was nice, but all talk. Quckly afterwards, it was sold to another Arab chap named Ali Al-Faraj, whose Wikipedia entry begins thus:
"Ali al-Faraj is a Saudi Businessman, and formerly the majority stakeholder in Portsmouth Football Club. It has been suggested that he may not exist."
Fans called him Al-Mirage, since he never showed up at games, could not be contacted by anyone at the club and his name initially turned nothing - absolutely nothing - up on Google.
A few months later Chainrai himself stepped in and took the club over. He put it into admin and was given preferred creditor status by his favourite administrator, Andrew Andronikou. Andronikou "sold" it back to Chainrai, who "sold" it to Convers Sports Initiatives last year. They went pop after the owner, Antonov, was implicated in a fraud case when his Lithuanian bank collapsed. Chainrai stepped back in and put the club into adminstration again. To the general satisfaction of every Pompey fan the judge basically said that having Chainrai's man as administrator again would be well dodgy, so the aforementioned Trevor Birch was appointed. The hope is that Chainrai's claim that he is owed millions will be proved to be groundless, if not fraudulent, and he'll scuttle away with nothing.
Phew!