DINAMO GET STATE AID

Dinamo have hit on hard times and are now deep in debt and could have gone out of business had the President of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze, not stepped in to help.

Shevardnadze declared that Dinamo would now be taken over by the Dinamo State Sport Society and one of their first tasks will be to look at the financial state of the club.

There have been many accusations as to what did happen to the vast sums of money that Dinamo earned from selling their players abroad.

Kakha Targamadze, the interior minister and honorary chairman of the Dinamo State Sport Society, said: "During this time the club was robbed, its foundations destroyed, and it is not known where it lost the tens of millions of dollars Georgia should have received from player transfers."

Further confusion arose as although the society had 10 percent of the club's shares, Dinamo had not re-registered themselves as a company, as the government had dictated.

However, Targamadze promised that the society would take over the club's debts and keep it afloat.

Dinamo's future had been in doubt for some time, with their former president Merab Ratiani being sentenced to a five-year suspended sentence for stealing £40,000 from the club.

Fifa has also threatened to ban Dinamo from all of next season's competitions if they do not pay debts of £165,000 by February 11.

This money is owed to Georgian third division club Mretebi Tbilisi as part of the £2 million deal that saw Georgi Kinkladze move from Dinamo to Manchester City in 1995.

Dinamo did receive good news as they could receive up to £3.8 million from the sale of Dinamo Kiev star Kakha Kaladze to Milan in January, as the result of a sell-on clause in his transfer from Tbilisi to Kiev in 1997.