Corinthians break off partnership with MSI

Carlos Tevez's former club Corinthians have announced they are breaking off their controversial partnership with the London-based sports management group MSI.

The Brazilian club's executive council voted unanimously in favour of ending the partnership, which was less than halfway through its 10-year term, at a meeting on Tuesday night.

"It's the end of a partnership," Rubens Aprobato Machado, one of the council's 241 members, told Brazilian television. "It was a unanimous decision."

Corinthians directors said they were considering legal action to avoid a multi-million dollar penalty fee for ending the partnership.

The decision came two weeks after a Brazilian judge ordered the arrest of agent Kia Joorabchian, who ran MSI in Brazil, and Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who authorities said was one of the group's investors, on money-laundering charges.

Joorabchian is the agent for Argentina forward Tevez, who was Corinthians' major signing during the MSI partnership and is now involved in a dispute over a proposed move from West Ham United to Manchester United in England.

Corinthians signed the deal with MSI in December 2004 saying it would turn them into the pride of South America, although critics said at the time that not enough was known about MSI.

The agreement was that MSI would finance the club's football department and be entitled to 51 percent of profits.