Have we got good reasons to be worried about Panjab Warriors?

I am indebted to my Morecambe-supporting chum Ian for pointing me in the direction of an article written by one Daniel Austin and published by the BBC yesterday. It looks at the possible relationship between the most hated man in Morecambe – Jason Whittingham – and the club’s apparent only hope for survival in a situation where expulsion from the National League hangs in the balance: Panjab Warriors. You can read it here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c860979gg64o

Daniel Austin first of all considers the role of current Morecambe owner Jason Whittingham and his closest associate Colin Goldring in an assessment which pulls no punches:

“Whittingham has been a director at 25 companies during his career, according to Companies House. Of those 25 companies, 18 have been either dissolved, voluntarily dissolved, put into administration, put into liquidation, or put into receiver action (the precursor stage to liquidation). Two of Whittingham’s companies had been dissolved by compulsory strike-off prior to his takeover of Morecambe – but he still passed the EFL’s owners’ and directors’ test.

At many of the companies, Whittingham was joint director with business partner Colin Goldring – a legal worker turned entrepreneur – including at Morecambe until Goldring’s resignation in August 2022. Whittingham and Goldring were disqualified as company directors for 12 months following a court hearing in 2022.Goldring has also been barred by the Solicitors Regulation Authority from working for any law firm without clearance.”

The BBC’s Senior journalist then turns his attention to just one of the yarns Jason Whittingham has spun in (very) recent times about a possible sale of Morecambe FC:

“Whittingham says he has been trying to sell the club to a consortium led by Jonny Cato, but said over the weekend that Cato has been put off completing a deal “by continual negative press statements impacting on the club”.

Since Whittingham named Cato as a bidder10 days ago, Cato has not been seen or heard publicly. In fact, there is no businessman with the name Jonny Cato listed on Companies House, and the only person on professional networking website LinkedIn with the name Jonny Cato is a Swedish MP.The BBC contacted a man with a slightly different spelling of the name, the only such person with a credible business background in the UK, and were informed he has nothing to do with a potential bid for the club.

So who is Cato? Why does he have no business footprint in the UK? Does he exist?

Whittingham has not responded to requests for interview from the BBC.”

But Daniel Austin also raises many troubling questions about Panjab Warriors. He sums-up the on-off sale to this group before making this statement of fact as he has unearthed it:

“On their website Panjab Warriors state they “invest in sporting excellence” and “execute deals that drive value”. But the group does not list any specific investments, and no information about other investments is listed publicly.

The origin of the group’s money is also unclear. At least 75% of Panjab Warriors’ shares are owned by a company called JKM Capital, which is majority-owned by businessman Kuljeet Singh Momi.

Records show he has been involved in 15 companies during his career, the vast majority of which have been established since 2023, but none appear to have made notable profit.

JKM’s latest accounts describe it as a “dormant” company and list its current cash in hand as £100.

Several of Singh Momi’s businesses note the involvement of Sarbjot Johal, a young entrepreneur who was heavily linked with a takeover of the club in 2023.

Johal’s bid – and youth – earned him plenty of press coverage, but no takeover was ever completed after the extent of his wealth was thrown into doubt.

The exact nature of Singh Momi and Johal’s business relationship is not clear, but Singh Momi released a statement last year saying he has cut ties with Johal.

Panjab Warriors have not responded to repeated attempts at contact by the BBC.”

The fact that Panjab Warriors have suddenly gone very quiet indeed is worrying enough on its own. But a bit more digging about the company unearths an awful lot more disturbing questions which need to be urgently addressed.

The Board at Morecambe and others have been prone to get over-excited about the possibility of a New Dawn from time to time – only for nothing then to change. The saga of Sarbjot Johal – a young man of Indian heritage who used to roll-up with his entourage at the Mazuma Mobile in his big, posh car to be fawned over by the Morecambe Board of the time – is a case in point. When Push came to Shove, this gentleman wasn’t able to satisfy the English Football League that he had the financial resources to bankroll the club. Because – despite the ostentatious motor and an apparent Gift of the Gab – the companies he apparently controlled in India and here in Britain seemed to be little more than blank entries on even more empty balance sheets. And let’s face it folks – pulling the wool over the EFL’s eyes isn’t difficult to do, as their vetting of Jason Whittingham as a `fit and proper’ person to own one of their clubs – despite his appalling role in the destruction of Premiership Rugby Union club Worcester Warriors and his ban from being a Company Director for twelve months in the recent past – all too clearly shows.

There were also concerns about the relationship between Sarbjot and the Bond Group. Was he just a Straw Man who they had introduced into the mix to pretend that there was a prospective buyer who was prepared to pay a lot more for it than it was objectively worth?

This possibility was first raised from the floor at the calamitous Shrimps Trust meeting at the Exchange pub in Morecambe on Thursday, 18^th May 2023 by then ordinary member Tarnia Elsworth. The people who were in charge of it at the time just gawped at her, so outlandish – and obviously unfathomable – did this suggestion of skulduggery seem to be to them. So thank goodness Tarnia is currently at the helm and is unlikely to be blind-sided by any such shenanigans by Mr Whittingham and his associates.

Once the Sarbjot interlude was over, the following message appeared on the official Morecambe website on 6^th June 2025:

“Panjab Warriors is delighted to announce that it has received clearance from the English Football League (EFL) to proceed with the acquisition of Morecambe Football Club — marking the beginning of an exciting new chapter in the club’s proud history. Kuljeet Singh Momi and his Panjab Warriors team will now finalise the deal in the coming days.

Since mid-2024, Panjab Warriors have been providing financial support and outlining a vision built on sustainability, inclusivity, and long-term success.

“This is more than a business venture; it’s a commitment to the fans, the town, and the future of Morecambe FC,” said Gurpreet Singh, Head of Communications for Panjab Warriors. “Our aim is to build upon the club’s rich heritage, ensuring stability and fostering unity across all parts of the community. Panjab Warriors would like to extend their thanks to the club and its Board of Directors for their co-operation in obtaining EFL approval, and also to the EFL for their patience and support in getting to this stage”.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

But the first – and very important thing – to notice is that this was merely an intention to buy the club: that’s very different to an actual sale: when this announcement was made, the transfer of ownership was neither a done deal, nor a guaranteed outcome.

Putting that to one side, the second thing I asked myself when I first read this was: what does this apparently bold statement of intent by Panjab and the club actually tell us?

The answer, sadly, is: not a lot…

So is it just a collection of corporate bullshit phrases without any real meaning?

For example, what were the concrete steps this new group intended to take to achieve the policies – such as `ensuring stability’ that the new owners intended to actually implement?

Would there be new money available to develop the squad?

Or to improve the stadium?

Would people’s jobs at the club be secure?

Where was the detail?

One key part of Dr Singh’s statement wasn’t repeated on the Morecambe website at the time he made it. (I wonder why…) However, the BBC was quick to step into the breach and fill in at least some of the details which were so conveniently overlooked. As far as some of the issues involving money or investment were concerned, the spokesman for the potential new ownership announced:

“In the interests of transparency and until final due diligence and contracts are finalised, we are not in a position to say anything further at this stage. However, once we are in this position we are looking forward to meeting with supporters and media to update via the appropriate channels.”

So – as far as the pious hopes included in the other parts of the statement, were the Warriors also `not in a position to say anything further at this stage’? And what – in any case – did their words actually mean?

Morecambe doesn’t have a noticeable Sikh community and there is no Gurudwara (er: Sikh temple) I at least am aware of in the locality. There is a small Asian community in Lancaster but the majority of these people are Muslims and can trace their roots back to Gudgerat in the north of India where Sikhs are a rarity and – in all brutal honesty – not generally welcome either. (There is no space for even a brief history of India here but a quick look at the horrors the British set in train with Partition or the current tensions between India and Pakistan tells you a lot about the religious and clannish tensions which have always existed on the subcontinent.)

But – coming closer to home – do we really need to be fostering unity across all parts of the community in any case?

I didn’t realise (with the exception of some hardcore Lancaster City fans who have always hated our club for whatever bizarre probably tribal reasons) that this was a problem in these parts. So what and where is the community that seemingly needs unity to be fostered within during the months and years ahead? Sadly, this part of their statement reads to me at least like a catch-all for almost any club in the country with a large potential fanbase of people from different religions and cultures. It made me wonder who it was originally written for.

At the risk of being even more overtly cynical, you also have to ask yourself: why would an organisation with Indian heritage but currently based in west London want to invest in a non-league club located in north-west Lancashire in the first place? What’s all that guff about `the club’s rich heritage’? Sadly –and painfully – we need to remember that this `rich heritage’ includes two relegations in the last three years; the most recent one potentially catastrophic for the club and the community that the new owners seem to be so keen to serve.

But why would they want to do this at all? What is in it for them?

Your guess is as good as mine.

I sought further enlightenment by reading Martin Calladine’s thoughts about the Warriors. Martin is the author of the absolutely authoritative and always fascinating The Ugly Game. His analysis of the supposed wealth of Sarbjot Johal alone is worth reading for the forensic investigation he had made of this young man’s business accounts.  As far as Panjab Warriors and its apparently equally fabulously rich owner is concerned, I have lifted the following analysis from it. (For those of us too young to remember, the title `Meet the new boss” is the first line of the Who’s hit from way back when; “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. The second line is, very tellingly: “…Same as the old boss”.)

Meet the new boss (pt.2)

“Kuljeet Singh Momi is the prospective new owner of Morecambe. But while he has wide business interests and has founded or been a director of over a dozen companies in the UK, there’s limited publicly available evidence that he is rich, let alone “football rich.”

Earlier this week, I revealed that Singh Momi – who has been trying to buy Morecambe since the summer – is a former business partner of Sarbjot Johal, the fizzy-pop boy wonder whose bid for Morecambe collapsed last year.

In the absence of an answer as to why Singh Momi wants to buy the club, the next two questions that need addressing are: does he have money and, if so, where did it come from?

The answers, based on my research, are: it’s not clear and it’s not clear…

He goes on to list the reasons he says nothing is clear by looking at Singh Momi’s recent business dealing in typically forensic detail. His analysis paints a very worrying picture. Suffice it say that his conclusion – concentrating on just one apparently really significant business venture tells us that:

“Like most of Singh Momi’s businesses, Petronet’s Global Solutions’ “head quater” appears to be a mailbox or rented room in a west London further education college’s business centre. This, like a number of other aspects of the way some of Singh Momi’s businesses present themselves online, is not what I would typically expect to see from a big, well-run, profitable business conglomerate.”

To sum-up, Martin Calladine has stated elsewhere:

“Kuljeet Singh Momi has a history of founding businesses which make extravagant and seemingly unjustified claims for themselves despite being brand new.”

So are Panjab Warriors really the Knights in Shining Armour that all Morecambe fans have hoped they are? We don’t know much about them; why they are interested in our club or what plans they have for it in the short or long term. We can’t even be sure that their offer to buy the club is based on anything more than hot air. Could it be – just as apparently was the case with the mysterious Mr Johal – that (despite their threats of legal action against Jason Whittingham) they are actually nothing more than a stooge of the Bond Group? Could it be that the extraordinarily devious and unreliable `businessman’ from Essex who owns this shower has yet again pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes as his premier objective – to keep his disastrous grip on our club at all costs – finally comes to fruition?

We must hope not. But the signs aren’t hopeful. All we can say for certain at the moment is that we are all going to find out – one way or the other – on August 20^th next, when Morecambe’s 105-year-old history as a football club seems very likely to come to an end.