The bizarre story of a football prodigy, a stolen Ming vase and a Japanese extradition row

New York Times

12-04-2025

In happier times, Kaine Wright liked to think he had the world at his feet.
Neymar had picked him out as the outstanding player for England's five-a-side team in an international tournament organised by the Brazilian superstar.
Wright had been in the academy at Premier League club West Ham United. Others wanted to look at the young Londoner, too. And when everything got a bit complicated in England, there were invitations from Portuguese clubs and a brief arrangement in Florida with Orlando City.
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Ultimately, though, his life took an entirely different path into international criminality, an extradition request from the Japanese government and the kind of story that feels like a Netflix mini-series in the making.
In October 2023, Wright was sentenced to three years in prison after a foiled plot to sell a £2million ($3.9m at current rates) Chinese Ming vase that had been stolen during a heist at the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva, Switzerland.
Three men wearing ski masks, dark clothing and gloves had used power tools to slice open a hole in the museum's door, crawl in and smash glass cabinets to steal the white pomegranate vase, as well as a porcelain bowl and doucai-style wine cup, also from the imperial Ming dynasty.
Swiss police launched an international manhunt, in tandem with their London counterparts, and undercover detectives rooted out the gang's accomplices, Wright included, by posing as art collectors to offer £450,000 for the 14th-century vase in a sting operation at the five-star Marriott Hotel in Mayfair, London.
That, however, is only part of a long, elaborate story that now sees Wright and two other men facing extradition to Japan in relation to allegations they took part in a jewellery raid in Tokyo in November 2015, when he was 19.
It is the first time in history that Japan has applied for the extradition of criminal suspects from the United Kingdom and, though the request was initially rejected, an appeal was lodged by the Japanese government. A High Court judge ruled in favour of the application earlier this year, overturning the original decision.
Wright's lawyers argue that handing him over to Japan would leave him vulnerable to mistreatment, even torture, in the penal system of a country that has been accused by Human Rights Watch of operating a 'justice hostage' system to extract criminal confessions.
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His legal team has applied for permission to fight the decision at the Supreme Court and is seeking a discharge. If that fails, however, the UK will be asked to extradite a man who had once been part of West Ham's academy under Tony Carr, the youth-development coach famed for bringing through players such as Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and, two years Wright's junior, Declan Rice.
On Friday morning, at Westminster magistrates' court in London, Wright was ushered into a room where a sheet of paper attached to the door read, 'Extradition — Japan'.
The former footballer, wearing dark-rimmed spectacles and casual grey clothes, sat at the back of the room during a day of legal arguments about whether the UK should hand him over. Wright's lawyers were arguing that some of the magistrate's reasons he couldn't be extradited still stand and were renewing their pleas for Japan's application to be dismissed.
The allegation is that Wright and two older men went into Tokyo's upmarket Harry Winston jewellery store, posing as customers, before one of them attacked a 47-year-old security guard and hammers were used to smash an octagonal glass display cabinet containing precious gems.
The perpetrators got away with 46 items worth 106 million yen (£679,000; $739,000), including necklaces, diamond rings and luxury watches, from a store founded by Harry Winston, a New York businessman known as the 'King of Diamonds.'
Wright has never been formally charged, meaning he has never had to issue a formal plea, but his lawyers say he denies any involvement.
In court documents, however, the Japanese authorities allege the robbers left behind a series of clues. An Armani jacket was found and, according to investigators, DNA linked it to one of the alleged offenders. A pair of goggles bearing Wright's thumbprint was left at the scene. Detectives found evidence the three men had spent three nights at a two-star hotel, Elm Share House, in Tokyo. Shards of glass found at the property matched the broken glass from the crime scene, they claimed.
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CCTV footage supplied further evidence, according to court filings, and taxi records showed the trio had allegedly travelled to the store in Omotesando Hills, an exclusive shopping complex in central Tokyo. All three flew back to England two days later. Then, in March 2018, the Japanese government launched its extradition request.
Everything seemed so much more innocent when Billy Highton, co-founder of EDSV academy, was interviewed by his local English newspaper, the Herts Advertiser, in May 2015 for an article headlined, 'Premiership future beckons for St Albans football prodigy'.
Wright was 18 at the time and, having been released by West Ham two years earlier, he had teamed up with EDSV, training five days a week, to help him find a new club.
'Kaine turned up when we had a trial and asked if there was any chance of joining in,' Highton told the newspaper. 'We gave him a shot and he scored nine goals inside the first 30 minutes.'
The academy had a partnership with Oaklands College in St Albans, 20 miles north of London, and various trials were arranged to bring Wright to the attention of other professional clubs.
He spent time with Brentford and Watford, as well as travelling north for two weeks with Fleetwood Town's development team. Benfica invited him to Portugal. Braga did, too, and Maritimo, on the island of Madeira, offered him a contract. 'Because of financial issues at the club, we were unable to agree terms,' Highton explained, before adding that talks were still ongoing.
Kaine Wright signs officially with @RefuelPM free gifts #Starter #Mitchell&Ness #Adidas #EDSV @oaklandscollege pic.twitter.com/t1SKgO0Qv5
Nothing came of it, though, and the same article, including comments from Wright himself, provided an insight into his unorthodox and, at times, challenging background.
The college had found him somewhere to live because, as the newspaper put it, he had been 'constantly on the move, staying at different places because of family issues'.
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Wright was spending nights on a friend's sofa. His father had been in prison and, though he was attached to West Ham's under-16s for eight months, the teenager said he 'couldn't sign there for a while because of family problems'.
Highton said that the college had organised food for Wright but he was unable to sign for a club before the age of 18 because 'he didn't have a guardian to sign for him'.
EDSV means 'Every Day Stand Victorious'. Yet, just in case this story did not have enough twists already, in an unrelated incident, Oaklands terminated its contract with EDSV in April 2019 after a leaked sex tape went viral on the internet of two coaches on the college campus.
Shortly after that, on the night of June 1, when a grey Renault Koleos pulled up outside Geneva's Museum of Far Eastern Art and three masked men jumped out with power tools, hammers and crowbars.
By the time the police arrived, the thieves had disappeared — and so had some of the museum's treasured Chinese artefacts. The heist, in one judge's words, 'took less than a minute'.
Getting the vase back took considerably longer, but it was eventually returned to Switzerland after being discovered, undamaged, during the police sting that led to Wright and others being put behind bars. It had been kept in a plastic yellow JD Sports bag while members of the gang tried to arrange its sale, initially for £1m.
Wright had taken no active part in the heist but was convicted by a jury at Southwark Crown Court of conspiracy to convert criminal property.
He was one of the younger members of the criminal operation and, having denied the charge, he was supported during the trial by his partner and adoptive family. 'You strike me very much as a Jekyll and Hyde character,' the judge told him. 'You were a very likeable chap when you gave evidence but you lied, undoubtedly.'
The lawyers representing Wright are also hoping to be able to revive their arguments in the Supreme Court that deporting him to Japan could expose him to 'violent or oppressive interrogation' from the police. His legal representatives previously cited a report by Tokyo lawyer Maiko Tagusari that 'modern Japanese police practices still involve hair-pulling, kicking, shouting, slapping or threatening suspects with a knife'.
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Tagusari's report, cited in legal documents, alleges that confessions are forced out of suspects through aggressive tactics and Japanese law allows the use of 'arresting ropes, handcuffs, straitjackets and gags'.
Wright's lawyers argued it would violate the European Convention on Human Rights and, to support his case, they have taken the extraordinary step of obtaining a statement from Nassir Mohammed, a British man convicted of drug-trafficking after being stopped at Tokyo airport in 2018 with 2.5kilograms of methamphetamine in his suitcase.
Mohammed, whose evidence was described as credible by the High Court judge, alleged that Tokyo's public prosecutor 'aggressively screamed and shouted in his face and repeatedly pressured him to confess'.
The judge also considered evidence in relation to another British man who had been arrested in Japan for an unspecified crime and, according to court documents, was 'tied to a chair for four hours with a dog lead'.
So what, in theory, awaits Wright if Japan gets its wish to extradite a man, now 28, who once shared a pitch with Francesco Totti, one of the greats of Italian football?
Legal papers seen by The Athletic show a number of written assurances from the Japanese authorities that Wright and his co-accused 'will not be subject to torture or any other kind of physical abuse'.
The authorities in Tokyo have put in place a 'memorandum of co-operation' with the UK and state Wright would receive adequate food and exercise, clean bedding, visitor access and enough warm water to wash his hair 'at least three times a week'.
But there are other cases, according to Wright's legal team, that have brought Japan to the attention of the U.S. State Department and the UN Committee Against Torture and, as such, have been mentioned in the ongoing legal proceedings.
There have been instances of prisoners dying of heatstroke in their cells during heatwaves. Wright's legal team also cited one prisoner suffering excruciating burns after being made to stand barefoot in a room while the underfloor heating was ramped to 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees celsius).
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Prisoners in Japan are obliged to take part in compulsory labour from Monday to Friday, eight hours a day. In Mohammed's case, he described — in his evidence for the extradition hearing — 'making plastic bags and packaging chopsticks, accompanied by forced (military-style) marching to and from factories, where hours of work were undertaken in silence without eye-contact permitted'.
His experiences at Fuchu Prison left him with frostbite, screaming in agony, after being exposed to sub-zero temperatures during 20 days in solitary confinement. That punishment, he stated, was for laughing nervously when he was confronted by an aggressive prison officer during his workhouse duties. For that, he was made to sit on a chair and stare at the wall of a punishment cell from 8am to 5pm each day.
'There was no heating in his freezing-cold isolation cell and he was not permitted to wear shoes. It is unsurprising that frostbite in his feet set in,' Edward Fitzgerald, the KC representing Wright, states in court documents. 'Japanese prisoners have, in the past, frozen to death.'
Look online and you can still find footage of Wright playing for Orlando City in an exhibition match against Italian club Roma.
He was 17 at the time, but his two-week trial with Orlando did not result in a contract offer. Behind the scenes, it was questioned whether he had the right attitude to get where he wanted to be.
Others have found the same: that he could be a bit too full of himself for someone whose career had never properly taken off. Wright had a habit of telling managers he was better than the other players. He had a poor choice of words at times and, though he did have friends and people around him, he did not endear himself to everyone.
One of the reasons he went to Fleetwood, in England's north-west, was to take him away from London. Yet it did not work in Wright's favour when he declared to the club's management that they should watch closely because he was planning to score a hat-trick. Confidence was one thing — here, though, it was straying dangerously close to arrogance. He did, in fairness, score twice.
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In 2017, Wright played for England's five-a-side team in the final of Neymar's 'Five' tournament in Praia Grande, Brazil. Two years later, Wright represented his country again in the six-a-side Socca World Cup, with former Manchester United manager Ron Atkinson working as the team's director of football.
By then, however, Wright was on Japan's radar and an investigation was underway that, in the words of one judge, led to a 'prima facie' case against him.
Wright's last reported club was Crowborough Athletic in England's ninth-tier Southern Combination Football League and, when he was unable to fund a star footballer's lifestyle, a picture has emerged of someone who has fallen in with hardened criminals.
Last month, three men from south east London, including Wright's biological father, 46-year-old Daniel Kelly, were found guilty of plotting to murder a man who was left paralysed after being shot at the house he was renting from British comedian Russell Kane in Woodford Green, north east London, in July 2019.
The victim was Paul Allen, then 41, a cage-fighter and 'sophisticated' career criminal who was convicted in 2009 for taking part in Britain's biggest armed robbery, when £54m was stolen from the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.
Detective Superintendent Matt Webb, who led the police investigation into the assassination attempt, described the three hitmen as 'hardened, organised criminals' who had 'acted together in a well-planned and orchestrated manner to shoot their victim'.
He added: 'This may look like the plot to a Hollywood blockbuster but the reality is something quite different. This was horrific criminality.'
Kelly and his accomplices, brothers Louis and Stewart Ahearne, will be sentenced on April 25 after a trial in which jurors were told that, a month before the attempted gangland hit, the three men burgled Chinese Ming dynasty artefacts from the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva.
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But Kelly's part in this story goes even further: he is also one of the three men Japan wants to extradite for the Tokyo robbery, suspected of being the member of the gang who attacked the Harry Winston security guard.
It was, according to the Japanese authorities, a dad-son enterprise aided by a third man, 38-year-old Joe Chappell.
Extradition proceedings against Kelly were put on hold while he was on remand for the shooting, as well as a separate charge of burgling a luxury apartment in Sevenoaks, Kent, when he and the Ahearne brothers posed as police officers and even put a siren on top of their hired Renault Captur car.
The wine cup that Kelly's gang stole in Switzerland remains missing, despite the offer of a £10,000 reward, but the missing porcelain bowl has been returned to the museum after detectives found it had been flown to Hong Kong and sold for £80,000 at an auction house.
As for Wright, his solicitor in the case of the stolen Ming vase told the court he had made 'a series of stupid choices'.
Wright could be heard joking before his latest hearing that he was sitting in the court's 'seat of honour'. He alleged that a senior diplomat from the Japanese embassy had taken a photograph of him, illegally, inside the courtroom (denied by the relevant official).
The case will return to court on May 16 and, in the meantime, Wright is prohibited from leaving the country.
(Illustration: Will Tullos/The Athletic; photos: Getty Images)