Moores bidding for British soccer team

John Moores, former Padres owner and major San Diego real estate wheeler-dealer, is trying to buy Nottingham Forest, a British soccer team, according to the Nottingham Post.

The team is currently owned by Fawaz Al Hasawi, a Kuwait moneybags, who may retain a 10 percent to 20 percent interest, and possibly share in some management duties, according to the publication.

The team was founded in 1865 as Nottingham Forest Football and Bandy Club, a group of shinty players. Shinty is a team game played with a ball and sticks, now mainly played in the Scottish Highlands. Bandy is basically shinty played on ice. The Nottingham team is in Britain's second tier of teams, and has a good record through the years.

It appears that if Moores buys the club, Nottingham will get supersoft coverage from local media, rather like how the Union-Tribune fawns all over local teams. In describing Moores, The Nottingham Post says that he made "around $600 million alone from the shares in one company he invested in, Peregrine Systems." There is no mention that Peregrine was San Diego's biggest scam, and Moores, the long-time chairman of the company, dumped more than $600 million of stock before the scandal broke, and he had sold around $500 million during the fraud period. While executives went to prison, Moores and other board members got off with a $55 million fine.

In the criminal cases against other executives, judges would not let attorneys for those executives mention that Moores had sold hundreds of times more stock then key defendants.