Month: December 2021

Baggage Handler To Horse Racing Millionaire: Industry Regulators Not Able To Keep Criminals Out?

Australian horse racing authorities have come under fire for allowing alleged cocaine kingpin Damion Flower to operate at the sport's highest level, according to an investigation printed by abc.net.au.

The former airline baggage handler was denied a license as a groom in August of 2013 because of his history of violence and bankruptcy, but four years later regulators accepted Flower's check for $1.8 million to help create one of the world's richest horse races, The Everest.

It was apparently Flower's part-ownership of Australian Group 1 winner and leading sire Snitzel that helped convince the regulatory body, Racing New South Wales.

“In the circumstances, it could not be reasonably suggested that a person who made many millions of dollars from selling shares in a horse that cost him $260,000, while retaining an ongoing revenue stream in Australia's No.1 performing stallion, is not a person of considerable means,” Racing NSW general counsel Pete Sweney said in a statement to abc.net.au.

Flower was arrested in May of 2019, and eventually pleaded guilty to importing 228 kilograms of pure cocaine from South Africa on 12 flights since 2016. At his sentencing hearing last Friday, Flower's attorney told the court Flower was “weak but not beyond redemption.”

“Mr Flower failed to have the fortitude to withdraw from the enterprise,” Francis said, according to news.com.au. “This was an isolated breach in criminality.”

Flower and his co-conspirator John Mafiti are due to be sentenced in February 2022.

According to Nick McTaggart, Australia's most senior operational officer investigating money laundering until he retired in 2016, organized crime has a long history with horse racing.

“The criminals are able to operate in plain sight,” McTaggart told abc.net.au. “The beauty about the horseracing game is that you can either buy such assets individually, or you can buy them with a group of other people, which doesn't diminish your wealth, but doesn't allow asset confiscation groups to make a complete claim on your assets.

Between 2013 and 2019, Flower purchased over $30 million of Thoroughbreds between Australia's auction houses, Inglis and Magic Millions. He would follow those purchases by selling off shares to investors.

McTaggart also said that racing's regulators are not in a position to be able to stop criminals like Flower.

“It's not within Racing NSW's bailiwick or charter to be doing background checks on the individuals involved in horseracing, unless they have a suspicion that these individuals are actually doing something by way of illegal activity with a horse or fixing races or issues like that,” McTaggart told abc.net.au. “So, their ability to be able to scrutinize activity is fairly limited in its terms.”

Read more at abc.net.au and news.com.au.

The post Baggage Handler To Horse Racing Millionaire: Industry Regulators Not Able To Keep Criminals Out? appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

View From The Eighth Pole: Soul Searching, Restitution In Order For Owners Who Supported Jorge Navarro’s Stable

From Jan. 1, 2016, through March 8, 2020, trainer Jorge Navarro won 741 races from 2,468 starts. That's a win percentage of an unfathomable 30%.

The owners of those runners earned $24,360,514 in purse money.

That's 741 wins and millions of dollars in first-place money that, in my opinion, rightfully belongs to someone else. The judge who sentenced Navarro to five years in prison agrees. She has ordered Navarro to pay restitution of $25,860,514, an amount he surely doesn't have unless the owners who benefited from his cheating are willing to fork it over.

Here's just a few examples.

There's the $180,000 that Lael Stable should have received for a win by the stable's Divining Rod in the Grade 2 Kelso Handicap at Belmont Park in 2017. The Arnaud Delacour runner had to settle for $60,000 after finishing second behind what we can only assume was a juiced Sharp Azteca, who raced for the Gelfenstein Farm of Ivan Rodriguez. Divining Rod, a son of Tapit, was deprived of a G2 win, something that also would have had ripple effects on the catalogue page of his family female.

Another horse cheated out of a graded stakes win by Sharp Azteca was Brittlyn Stable's Forevamo, trained at the time by Al Stall. The Uncle Mo gelding finished second in the G3 Pat Day Mile Stakes at Churchill Downs in 2016. He would have earned $141,050 for first place but instead received just $45,500. His owner didn't get the glory of standing in the Churchill Downs winner's circle with the Hall of Fame jockey for whom the race is named or get new hardware for their trophy case.

It is about the money, but it isn't JUST about the money.

I learned that from Josie Martino, who with husband Salvatore Delfino raced Wildcat Red in the colors of their Honors Stable Corp. The son of D'Wildcat won six of 22 starts for trainer Jose Garoffalo, including the G2 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park in 2014.

Two years later, Wildcat Red finished second in the Sunshine Millions Sprint Stakes at the South Florida track, earning $29,100. The winner of the $90,210 first-place prize was X Y Jet, who at the time was racing for Gelfenstein Farm and trained by Navarro. The trainer would later admit to injecting the horse with illegal performance enhancing drugs.

X Y Jet dropped dead two months before Navarro was taken into custody as part of the sweeping FBI investigation that led to indictments against more than two dozen trainers, veterinarians and drug suppliers.

No owners have been charged, though those who gave horses to Navarro to train may have benefited the most from his cheating.

Martino and Delfino hit it big with Wildcat Red, a $30,000 OBS 2-year-old purchase who earned $1.1 million in 22 starts. He was one of the first horses campaigned by their small stable. Yet even with the horse's success, Martino said in a phone call to the Paulick Report, she and her husband feel cheated by having to compete against a juiced Navarro runner in the Sunshine Millions. “We are speaking out in Red's honor,” said Martino, an admitted animal lover who was stunned by Navarro's callous treatment of horses. “Red can't talk, but he deserves to be heard. What happened wasn't right and it wasn't fair to the horse.”

In virtually every one of the 741 races won by Navarro from 2016-'20, there are similar stories of horses, owners, trainers and jockeys being deprived of a victory and higher purse money. It might be a claiming race or a stakes, on dirt or turf, in New York, New Jersey or Florida. Cheating is cheating at any level.

The owners of horses trained by Navarro who gained financially by his serial doping might benefit  from some serious soul searching. If it's only about winning, if that's why they sent horses to someone so brazen that he had a customized pair of shoes with #juiceman printed on them in big letters, this game would be better off without them. It will survive.

In the now-famous video filmed at Monmouth Park in the summer of 2017, when Navarro and one of his owners, Randal Gindi of Monster Racing Stables, joked about Navarro being the “juiceman,” the trainer had a brief moment of candor.

“We f – – k everyone,” Navarro said.

He wasn't kidding.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

The post View From The Eighth Pole: Soul Searching, Restitution In Order For Owners Who Supported Jorge Navarro’s Stable appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Verified by MonsterInsights