Premier League will demand to know who owns Leeds if they win promotion

Leeds United will be forced to reveal exactly who owns the club if they are promoted to the Barclays Premier League.

The league’s chief executive Richard Scudamore said they will apply the rules on ownership transparency more strictly than the Football League have done.

Scudamore yesterday told the Culture, Media and Sport committee investigating the governance of football: “The Football League have chosen not to apply the rule as robustly as we think we will be applying it.

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“The Football League have one view of how to interpret that rule and we have a more stern or harsh view of what the rule means. Our clubs absolutely agree unanimously that we should tell the public who owns the clubs and anything short of that is inadequate.

“If it arises, if Leeds United on sporting merit deserves to be in the Premier League, we will do all we can to persuade them to stay within the rules.”

Leeds’s chief executive Shaun Harvey told MPs last month the club’s owners are a holding company called FSF based in the West Indian island of Nevis, owned by three discretionary trusts.

The owners of these trusts are unknown but have appointed two men, Patrick Murrin and Peter Boatman, to run the club and they had asked Ken Bates to be chairman.

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Leeds’s ownership statement say no single person or company owns more than 10 per cent of the discretionary trusts.

Two years ago the Football League wrote to Leeds for clarification over who was in ultimate charge of the club and the documentation subsequently provided led to the club’s owners passing the League’s fit and proper persons test.

Premier League chairman Sir Dave Richards yesterday claimed ex-FA chairman Lord Triesman was the man responsible for agreeing a new deal with England manager Fabio Capello, insisting that he had just been left to “pick up the pieces”.

Triesman last month said he had nothing to do with removing a clause in Capello’s contract that allowed the Italian to stay until 2012.

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But former Sheffield Wednesday chairman Richards told a Parliamentary inquiry yesterday that Triesman had made the decision, which the FA admitted last week had been a “mistake” because it should have been passed by the FA board.

Richards and league chief executive Scudamore also rejected claims made by Triesman that Richards “aggressively” blocked reform and insisted their new rules are even tougher on club debt than UEFA’s.

In relation to the Capello issue, Richards told MPs that he was informed at a meeting in April last year that Triesman had agreed Capello could stay until 2012 – the FA chairman then resigned the following month over a separate matter.

Richards said: “It was the first time I had heard of that, it had been pre-agreed with the chairman.

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“Unfortunately I had to pick up the pieces from that and had to bear the brunt of the blame.

“I wouldn’t take decision like that on my own – I have always been one to consult.”

In February, Triesman told the inquiry Richards used aggressive tactics to bully others in the game into blocking the FA’s efforts to change but the Premier League chairman said yesterday he was hurt by such accusations.

He said: “That statement by Lord Triesman really saddened me. I have never bullied anyone. To think the Premier League chairman can block nine others [FA board members] is ridiculous.

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“To be called a bully, that really hurt – for 12 years I have been one of the chairmen of the NSPCC and have helped raised half a billion pounds for children who are victims of bullying.”

Richards and Scudamore also said the entire FA board had rejected Triesman’s plans for football reform – including monitoring of club finances – being submitted to the Government because they had been sprung on them rather than any consultation having taken place.

Asked about the introduction of a winter break, Richards and Scudamore also said it was down to UEFA and FIFA to make space in the fixture calendar because the Premier League, FA Cup and Carling Cup competitions had all reduced the number of match days in the last 20 years.