Err, answer, yes.Does he ever have a winner
The Great Man is one of the biggest cheats that racing has ever lauded. His operation is essentially organised crime.
I I'm sure I've seen that interview on YouTube recently.As I've said (bored everyone) with many times, I like racing and betting for the racing and betting, NOT for the people in racing and betting and this is a case in point.
I'm just not interested in the bloke - I don't care how much money he's got (the wealth of others is a sad obsession for many) or how he got it.
Never met him, never want to, and imagine him to be like Dermot Desmond (who I have met and didn't like one bit) as these self-made wealthy financiers tend to be of a type.
Tbf to him, way back in the day, as a much younger man, my Dad and I watched him interviewed by Julian Wilson after McManus's (sic) Millers Hill landed a gamble at the Cheltenham Festival.
"I hear you've hit the bookies hard," Wilson fawned over him.
"They know about it," was McManus's nicely-understated reply.
My Dad thought that was a cool reply and teenage me agreed.
But that's as good as it ever got.
He has more horses than he could probably name and keeps a lot of people in racing in a job - but none of those people is me, nor would I ever allow that to be the case, so I really couldn't give a f***k what the bloke says or does ever tbh.
Would that even figure in the key events that made him a billionaire.JP McManus and the Glackin Report
For anyone who has not gone near this before, the Glackin Report examined the sale of the Johnston Mooney & O’Brien Ballsbridge site to Telecom Éireann in the late eighties and early nineties.
What it found about McManus was not complicated.
He provided a £1.5m loan through a Jersey account in the name “J & N McMahon” to Chestvale Properties, the company used to buy the site.
When Telecom Éireann bought the site for roughly £9.4m, he was one of the people who shared in the profit.
The report stated he received £500,000 in cash as his portion. It put it plainly:
“I can find no evidence that any other person received the cash of £500,000 and find accordingly that it was received by Mr McManus.”
That sentence matters. He denied benefiting. The State investigator said he did.
Despite how politically charged the affair became, no criminal charges were brought against him or anyone involved.
Readers can make their own judgement, but that is what the report actually recorded and what it says about The Great Man’s relationship with the truth.
Would that even figure in the key events that made him a billionaire.