Hearts boss Romanov in tax probe

A tax inquiry has been launched into part of the business empire run by Hearts majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov, BBC Scotland has learned.

A Frontline Scotland doucumentary looks into the past of the Lithuanian tycoon who has claimed he will make Hearts champions of Europe in 10 years.

It reports that the Bosnian Serb finance minister launched the inquiry.

But Mr Romanov defended his business operations and claimed the minister did not understand the accounts.

The documentary reports that tax inspectors raided the offices of the companies connected to Birac, a bauxite processor in the Bosnian town of Zvornik.

Svetlana Cenic, finance minister of the Bosnian Serb Government, said she ordered the raids by tax inspectors because she wanted to know why the government had not been receiving taxes.

But Mr Romanov said: "I gave the money to the factory which was just scrap metal, without infrastructure, ruined and in debt.

'Economic literacy'

"If a finance minister does not know to decipher the balance sheet it is his problem. Unfortunately it is not just his problem, it is the problem of the whole country it is a lack of economic literacy."

In a rare interview Mr Romanov also attacks former Hearts manager George Burley and Phil Anderton, former chief executive, both of whom he sacked, and former chairman George Foulkes, who resigned in protest.

He said they lacked "elementary human qualities" and that he feared the club would have been buried if they had stayed.

Graham Rix and Mr Romanov's son Roman, at Tynecastle

Mr Romanov praised as a "hero" Graham Rix, the new manager who served a prison sentence for having sex with a 15-year-old girl.

He alleged the girl tricked "a hero such as this coach" and sold the story for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The judge who jailed Graham Rix in 1999 said there was no evidence the girl had set out to trap him.

Mr Romanov's comments have sparked an angry response from child welfare organisations in Scotland.

ChildLine Scotland director Anne Houston described them as "unacceptable" and Maggie Mellon, of Children 1st, said he had "let football and young people down badly".