Kia Joorabchian has defended his ownership of Carlos Tevez's registration while he was with Manchester United.
Manchester City eventually coughed up to buy Tevez from the agent, who told TalkSport about how he became involved with Tevez and Liverpool midfielder Javier Mascherano.
He said: "In the case of those two particular players, we ran a team called Corinthians in Brazil and we bought the economic rights of those two players way back when they were young - I think they were about 18 or 19 years old.
"It happens all over Europe (the ability to buys players rights) as well. It happens in Portugal and Spain and a little bit in Italy but what it is, is you don't actually buy a player as such. Even the football clubs here - the newspapers talk about Man City for example buying Adebayor or Man United selling Ronaldo - you don't actually own a football player.
"What you have is like most other walks of life, is that you buy a contract for that player to play so he signs a contract and you pay a fee for that contract. It's exactly the same way in South America where private companies have hedge funds, private equity funds or just normal investors in football clubs can participate in the ownership of that contract for that period of time.
"You are only buying a contract for a set period of time and it works exactly like a football club, it's registered with the federations in South America and it's accepted by FIFA."
