Incidents of tampering, when detected, can result in fines and/or sporting-related penalties being enforced against the offending teams, players, agents and/or other facilitating parties.
[4] Chelsea were again at the centre of a controversy in 2009, when the club was found guilty of inducing Gaël Kakuta to break his contract with French team RC Lens in 2007.
[5] Chelsea appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, who subsequently lifted the sanctions on the club and the player after ruling that Kakuta did not have a valid contract with Lens, and therefore could not have breached it.
[6] Harry Redknapp, manager of Tottenham Hotspur at that time, has said that activity which verges upon 'tapping-up' regularly occurs in deals between Premier League clubs,[7] and Scott Minto, a pundit for Sky Sports, said that the ban was "extremely harsh" because of the frequency of it.
[8] However, there have been other cases where clubs have received transfer window bans for tapping-up; notably, Roma over Philippe Mexès, and FC Sion over Essam El-Hadary.