FORMER Hearts owner Vladimir Romanov wanted to work with Celtic before taking over the Jambos, it has been revealed.
A new podcast has lifted the lid on how the controversial Russian-Lithuanian businessman rose from Soviet submarine cook to millionaire football supremo and fugitive.
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But before his takeover of the debt-ridden Gorgie club in 2005, the 77-year-old had earmarked a relationship with the Hoops.
Liutauras Varanavicius, once a non-executive director at Hearts, recalls how he changed Romanov’s mind after his now defunct FBK Kaunas side lost 5-0 to the Glasgow giants over two legs a year earlier.
The exec, who was also president of the Lithuanian Football Association, made the startling revelation to journalist Martin Geissler on new BBC podcast Romanov: Czar of Hearts.
He said: “I said to him there’s such a bad situation in Scottish football financially you can buy ten of them instead of them buying you.
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“Then we spoke to some of the auditors bankrupting clubs and we found that in that time a lot of Scottish clubs had big financial problems.
“We started to look at what to buy instead of whom to sell to.”
It’s claimed Romanov had met with the Celtic chairman for dinner the night before their match and that he thought establishing a link would help him sell Lithuanian players to European sides for profit.
Instead, he switched plans and his advances to buy a Scottish club were rejected by Dundee, Dundee United and Dunfermline before he struck a deal with Hearts.
Romanov declared after taking over that they could win the Champions League in five years.
But he left his role in 2013 when the club went bust owing around £15million and had to be bought out of administration a year later for £2.5million by a consortium led by present owner Ann Budge.
He was then accused of stealing around £37million from his own bank following a seven-year global fraud probe.
That included £12million spent on the purchase of the Jambos, Belarus’ FC Partizan Minsk, the Lithuanian basketball club Zalgiris and properties in Russia, the Netherlands and London’s posh Mayfair.
He fled to Russia in May 2013 and was granted asylum three months later, with Lithuanian authorities having failed in a number of bids to extradite him to stand trial in person.
Romanov came out of hiding in 2021 to reveal he’s spent the last of his fortune on restoring and living in a nuclear submarine in a freezing village.
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His vessel, the same type he served on in the Russian army, is based in the northern outpost village of Nikulskaya, in the Vologda Oblast region of the country, which has a population of 17 and reaches temperatures of minus 22.
The first three episodes of the podcast are out on BBC Sounds today and a further six will be released weekly on the following Saturdays.
Former managers Graham Rix, Paulo Sergio and Anatoliy Korobochka are interviewed along with several ex-players including – Edgaras Jankauskas, Saulius Mikoliunus, Roman Bednar, Andy Webster, Michael Stewart, Ryan McGowan, and Paul Hartley.
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