The club's administrator Andrew Andronikou revealed the new claim to a meeting of creditors today which takes Pompey's total debt to £138million. The creditors voted in favour of a Company Voluntary Arrangement, a repayment deal where most will get just 20p in the pound over five years, but that should secure Portsmouth's future. The big losers will be former owners Alexandre Gaydamak, Sulaiman Al-Fahim and Ali Al-Faraj and the tax man, whose debts are unsecured. Football creditors such as other clubs and current owner Balram Chainrai, who is a preferential creditor, will not lose out, and neither will charities or small creditors owed £2,500 or less. Andronikou said the club was still up for sale but no offers have been made and Chainrai could now stay on as owner with vastly reduced debts to cope with. Asked about Chainrai remaining, Andronikou said: "We don't know. The club is still up for sale and looking for a purchaser and have not received any firm offers, but in the last few weeks there has been interest from a variety of parties saying the most appropriate time to look is when the CVA starts. "As far as the ownership situation is concerned this has not changed." Chainrai's £14.2million loans were secured against the club and the stadium, and now the CVA has been agreed he will be in the situation of being in control of the club with most of the debts written off, and a guarantee of £32million in parachute payments arriving in the next 14 months. That cash will help pay off the football creditors, with that sum around £17million. Andronikou did raise doubts over whether the most prominent interested party, a consortium fronted by Cheshire-based property tycoon Rob Lloyd, would table a formal bid. Andronikou also tried to clear up confusion over a claim made this week by the Football League Pension Fund, apparently for £50million. The fund is not run by the Football League but for non-playing employees of all the clubs, and although it has a deficit the total is less than a third of the figure quoted. Andronikou said: "I don't think it's a real debt, I have this idea that it covers the whole Football League pension fund and not just Portsmouth. "I think it was a figure put in just to make a claim on the administration, I'm sure in the fullness of time it will be insignificant." It is believed the actual claim against Pompey will turn out to be £200,000. The extra claim from HM Revenue & Customs does appear a serious matter however. Andronikou added: "The HMRC [debt] went up from £17.5million to £35million, they have had a review of possible tax outstanding from player salaries or from image rights and they have made an assessment." The meeting at Fratton Park will now allow Pompey to come out of administration ahead of the new campaign, and so avoid further a points sanction from the Football League. There has been controversy over whether 'football creditors' should be given preferential treatment but Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore maintains such rules are necessary to protect other clubs. "If you want to keep your status in the pyramid of football, in the 92, you have to pay off those people around you, because you are forced to trade with them again," Scudamore told Sky Sports News. "If a local business goes bust and someone does not pay, you can go and trade with someone else - there is always another plumber or another builder, somebody else to go and do business with. "In football, you stay in the ladder, and the cost of staying in the ladder is you have to pay the clubs around you in the ladder. "It is a football rule which has been there forever. "I can defend the football rule, but it is difficult of course when local businessmen and St John's Ambulance are owed money." Portsmouth are expected to sell off players in the summer in an attempt to slash the wage bill from £48million a year to £10million, a figure Andronikou believes it right for the Championship. Manager Avram Grant's future is still unresolved and he wants a number of guarantees before he will commit to staying in charge.
