Jacco Van Seventer
Jacco van Seventer (aka; JvS, Jan Jacobus van Seventer)
Background
Jan Jacobus van Seventer was born September 1972. His nationality is Dutch, but the UK is his country of residence. His correspondence address (Jan 2020) is in Cheshire.
Company Check Records, “Mr Jan Jacobus Van Seventer (Director ID = 910821289) holds 1 appointment at 1 active company, has resigned from 6 companies and held 6 appointments at 6 dissolved companies. His longest current appointment spans 14 years, 7 months and 0 days at J T RESOURCE LTD. The combined cash at bank value for all businesses where he holds a current appointment equals £0, a combined total current assets value of £0 with total current liabilities of £0 and a total current net worth of £0.” The majority of his businesses have been IT related.
Van Seventer is believed to have had business connections with Chris Gascoine at Yenton Group and Emirates Focus, and through JTRS Ltd with the French company Econocom, with which Claudiu Florica is also connected.
One mystery, in which van Seventer may have played a role is the connection between Nimer and Florica. Prior to appointing Florica as a director of Charlton Athletic, Nimer had been involved with Florica in a proposed purchase of Dinamo Bucharest, and returned to the idea in June 2020, after agreeing to sell ESI to Elliott. But who or what had brought Nimer and Florica together? A possible answer is Microsoft licensing. Van Seventer was on the board of JTRS Ltd from 2006-9 and one of its biggest partners, Econocom, deals in industrial Microsoft licensing in Western Europe. Florica is notorious in Romania due to his involvement in two court cases relating to Microsoft licensing and alleged corruption, including possible money laundering. Maybe van Seventer’s Microsoft connections were the “missing link” between Nimer and Florica.
In addition, van Seventer had connections from 2008 with Abu Dhabi Business Development, the private office of Sheikh Saeed Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan. JvS’s mini-bio on the late 2019 – early 2020 version of the now-defunct Abu Dhabi Business Development website described him in delightfully vague terms, as follows:
Jacco van Seventer – Managing Director – After a successful career in the IT industry, supplying the education sector in numerous countries, Jacco van Seventer joined ADBD in 2008. Working alongside the main board, his responsibilities are varied. Jacco’s contributions as part of the main board have been instrumental in successfully forming many strategic alliances in sectors such as Insurance, Oil & Gas, sports and television, Aviation, Commodities, Leisure, Shipping and Transport, to name but a few.
Jacco has worked alongside H.E. Tahnoon Nimer as well as other members of the Abu Dhabi Royal family for 12 years now. Fluent in multiple languages, Jacco runs the European office introducing companies, products and or new propositions to the Group. Furthermore, Jacco has a proven track record in business development, fund-raising and sponsorship.
On 11 Mar 2020, a fan looked into the registration of the adbd.ae website and found both the Registrant Contact and Tech Contact names were Jacco van Sevent (sic).
| June 8th 2014 | Gascoine, Alexander, Wright, Nemer, Hirst, Freeman, Vernekar, van Seventer, Zetterstrom, McQillan are listed on this version from 2014. This may be when the original website was developed as there are no Wayback machine snapshots before 2014. The picture of John Hirst is clearly incorrect; it is showing Chris Gascoine. |
| 19th August 2014 | Nemer, Al-Maamari, Gascoine, van Seventer, Alexander, Nangle, Verekar, Wright, Freeman, McQuillan, Zetterstrom |
| 16th August 2015 | Nemer, Al-Maamari, Gascoine, van Seventer, Alexander, Nangle, Wright, McQuillan, Zetterstrom Seren Zetterstrom went on to marry Jacco van Seventer |
| 15th October 2016 | Tahnoon Nemer (Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, UAE), Sultan Al-Maamari (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Chris Gascoine (Notts, UK), Nick Alexander (London, UK), Jacco van Seventer (Cheshire, UK), Bipin Vernekar (India), Colin Wright (Australia), Sally Mcquillan (Notts UK), HR |
| 27th May 2018 | Chris Gascoine (Director Real Estate, Planning, Property investment, Projects) Tahnoon Nemer (Director Abu Dhabi Relations, Projects, Recruitment services) Jacco van Seventer (Director Commodities, Planning, Projects) Thomas Campbell (Director Commodities, Projects, Planning) Nick Alexander (Commodities, Finance, Planning, Funds), John Hirst (Commodities, Finance, Planning, Investments, Structures) |
Role in the ESI ownership of CAFC
Van Seventer and Hirst visited solicitor Chris Farnell in November 2019 – apparently a follow-up visit to one paid by Gascoine and Hirst two years earlier. Farnell told a source that they asked him very general questions about how you would go about buying a club and he answered, but no names or clubs were mentioned. [private email]
Van Seventer was never formally introduced to the fans as an associate of the owners. His involvement became known due to his presence in the directors’ box at matches, his appearance with Nimer when he came to London, and the leaking of financial information following the Nimer-Southall fall-out. There is a shortage of independent sources concerning van Seventer’s role in the take-over and running of CAFC. Most is, either directly or indirectly, from Heller or on social media from Southall and his supporters.
Van Seventer has a remarkably light internet footprint, and once CAFC fans started looking into him, he reduced his Linkedin entry to virtually nothing. Interestingly, his subsequently revised Linkedin entry has rewritten the length of his history with ADBD, removing the time when he and his ADBD colleagues Gascoine and Hirst were investigating buying a football club (and he was listed on the website):
| Director Abu Dhabi Business Development Jan 2008 – Sep 2017 9 years 9 months Al-Ain, Abu Dhabi, UAE Private Office based in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, working directly for and on behalf of numerous members of the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi. We offer partnership opportunities for companies looking to establish or bring new product into the UAE. We are well versed across many sectors having worked with clients involved in finance, energy, technology, real-estate to name but few. We are skilled at building long-term client relationships. Covering the Middle East, Europe, India and Africa, we work with a diverse range of business sectors involved in diverse market opportunities. www.adbd.ae |
It is understood that in an email to a fan, dated 21 March 2020, Heller wrote:
| “JvS has told me that some of the £90k he charged in consulting fees was shared with TN, and I also have correspondence between JvS and TN, concerning the salary TN was looking for.” And also: “East Street Investments Ltd. (ESIL) was a company formed by JMW Solicitors in Manchester to take over Charlton Athletic Football Company (CAFC), with an option to also buy the stadium, the training ground and other physical assets. The key people in ESIL were Tahnoon Nimer (TN) and Matt Southall (MS), subsequently joined by myself as an independent director.” [next paragraph omitted, as not about JvS] “The reason that TN became a director of ESIL was that John Hirst and Jacco van Seventer introduced him to JMW as an investor of great wealth. However it proved difficult for JMW to provide the EFL with the evidence of TN having sufficient funds, or of him being independently wealthy, rather than acting (say) as a front for other more senior members of the Al Nahyan family. This was the reason for the transfer embargo.” |
This suggests van Seventer was one of the prime movers behind the scheme to buy CAFC. The provenance of money alleged to be available for the running of CAFC by ESI – and later by the consortium fronted by twice bankrupt Paul Elliott – was opaque. In an interview with the Romanian newspaper GSP, Heller stated ADBD (of which Heller was CEO and van Seventer was a director) had no funds.
The following is a summary of information, probably from the audit Nimer initiated after removing Southall and McHugh, leaked on social media after the falling out between Nimer and Southall in March 2020:
| 07/01/2020 | Consultancy Fee | £20,000.00 |
| 17/01/2020 | Consultancy Fee | £50,000.00 |
| 07/02/2020 | Consultancy Fee | £20,000.00 |
| 14/01/2020 | Car payment (Range Rover SVR, cost £97,277) | £2,409.00 (with no balloon payment |
| 14/02/2020 | Car Payment | £2,409.00 |
| Car Insurance | £167.00 | |
| Car service | £2,195.00 | |
| Expenses | £1,562.00 | |
| TOTAL | £118,675.00 |
[N.B. It is understood that JvS had use of one of the infamous fleet of six Range Rovers (and a Mercedes) which Southall obtained using club funds . It is also understood that the bodywork was damaged while in his possession, occasioning further expense for the club.]
On 23 March 2020, The Mail claimed to have seen invoices which included more than £100k fees and expenses claimed by van Seventer – presumably the same as summarised above
We have material, which we do not wish to share in public, that corroborates the Mail article. It also shows van Seventer as the person who linked up Southall and Nimer, and was responsible for managing Nimer’s monetary interest in the purchase of the club. It sheds light on the specific way in which it was anticipated that they would enrich themselves through the ESI vehicle.