Leeds Banter Archive October 10 2011

10 Oct 2011 22:22:46
David Conn of The Guardian reports...

''When the House of Commons select committee for culture, media and sport began its inquiry into the running of football in December - its brief to encourage supporter ownership of clubs - the MPs did not envisage the spotlight they would ultimately shine on Leeds United.

On 29 July, when the committee finally reported, its members had, according to one of the committee's key MPs, Damian Collins, been "appalled" by what they had discovered.

For six years, between 2005 and 2011, with Ken Bates the chairman throughout, nobody in football knew who owned Leeds United, one of football's biggest and most famed clubs.

Bates had arrived as the chairman when the club was suffering the latest in a series of dire financial crises.

After the 2005 takeover for which he was the most visible figure, he said he did not own any shares in Leeds, was not connected to the ownership, and that he was only the UK representative of the company that had bought Leeds.

That company was Forward Sports Fund, registered in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven.

The public cannot see who owns companies in tax havens; secrecy is one of the key services offered by such countries, many of them former British colonies or protectorates.

The Forward Sports Fund's investment in Leeds was administered by a financial firm based on the fifth floor of an elegant building in well-appointed Geneva, where we filmed for the BBC's Inside Out documentary.

Switzerland's law also preserves the anonymity of investors, according to the firm administering Forward Sport's Fund's investment, Chateau Fiduciaire.

Ken Bates has banned the BBC from covering Leeds United at Elland Road In the summer of 2010, when the Football League introduced new rules requiring its clubs to publish who owned substantial stakes in them - 10% or more - to improve transparency in football, Leeds stated that no individual owned 10% or more of the club, so no names needed to be disclosed.

Shaun Harvey, the club's chief executive, told the select committee at a session in Burnley that he did not know who the owners were, and - "to my knowledge," he said - neither did his chairman, Ken Bates.

The Premier League chief executive, Richard Scudamore, gave evidence to the committee shortly afterwards, saying that if Leeds were promoted, the Premier League would interpret the rules more strictly and require Leeds to say who the owners were.

Just days later, Leeds announced Bates had bought the club.

The unnamed investors who had apparently owned Leeds for six years, and certainly since the club came out of administration in 2007, had decided to sell it to him.

Bates, a UK tax exile resident in Monaco, had bought the club from the anonymous investors, via a company registered in Nevis, the West Indies, another tax haven.

Neither Bates, the club nor Chateau Fiduciaire said how much Bates paid to buy Leeds, why the unnamed investors had decided to sell when the club could achieve promotion and be worth a great deal more or, when they decided to sell, what efforts they had made to find a buyer, perhaps internationally, before concluding Bates was the buyer for them.

Preparing for the programme, we asked Leeds United and Bates to appear for an interview to discuss these issues, but he declined.

He has banned The Guardian from Elland Road after articles I wrote covering Forward Sports Fund's ownership, and he has now banned the BBC from non-contracted coverage of the club.

Relations between Leeds United's fans and the club's ownership are strained He uses his own page in the Leeds United matchday programme, which costs supporters £4, and Yorkshire Radio, a station Leeds United actually owns, to deliver his world view, although he has never disclosed who owned Leeds between 2005 and 2011.

We asked the Football League's chairman, Greg Clarke, on to the programme, to explain why the League approved the declaration Leeds made that nobody owned 10% or more of the club, without the League actually ever being shown who the shareholders were, so they could see the evidence for themselves. Clarke too declined to be interviewed.

In a debate in parliament, Collins said of Leeds United: "There can be few people in football who do not privately believe that Ken Bates has effectively been in control of the club for most of the past six years. The answers given by the club to questions about its ownership over that period stretch credibility, to say the least."

In its report, delivered in July, the select committee called for more transparency in football, so that supporters, who pledge their loyalty to their clubs for life, at the very least know who owns their clubs, and to whom they are giving their money.

Of Leeds' ownership during six years, via a company registered in a tax haven administered in Switzerland, the committee said: "There is no more blatant an example of lack of transparency."

The committee called for the Football Association, the national game's governing body, to investigate who owned Leeds between 2005 to 2011, with the assistance of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs if necessary.

Three months on, the FA has not responded to the report. It is waiting for the government to issue its response, due this month.''

Now make up your own minds! It's not difficult!!

So who owned Leeds before bates?

Why can you not just accept that Ken Bates NOW owns Leeds, and just stop raking up irrelevant rubbish like this?

If we get promoted we have a visible owner, so the League have NO REASON WHATSOEVER to investigate the club, so why are you worrying?

If it were MY money invested in Leeds for the past five or six years I might have a slight interest in all this, but it's now water under the bridge, and as for the media (BBC, Guradian, etc) what have they done for us in the past, apart from take every opportunity to kick us when we are down (which seems more often than not), publicise every debatable thing going about the club, and generally berrate the very name of our club?

Why shouldn't Bates use 'his media' the club programe, to promote his views, you don't have to buy the program, nor do you have to listen to Yorkshire Radio.

We have free choice, I sugest if you don't like what Ken Bates is about, then use that free choice and go do one?

And if you want to quote any such 'relationship between Leeds fans and the clubs ownership', I suggest you actually diligently ask ALL of us how we feel, instead of listening to the noisy minority, I am sure you will find the vast majority are quite happy that Ken Bates got involved in whatever form, especially when we now have a club verging on promotion back to the Premier league after being kicked and bankrupted by the likes of Ridsdale and other such scum.

Maybe you'd like to spend such a serious amount of time investigating the said Mr Ridsdale, and the MANY clubs he HAS milked and ruined, rather than sepculate about what Ken Bates may or may not have done?

I am sick of seing our past dug up over and over again when we are trying to move forwards, onwards and upwards!

MOT Leeds4alongtime

I think you will find that the minority is in fact a majority in wake of the recent poll by the LUST...
Get your head out of the clouds and respect other peoples opinions before spouting nonsense you know very little about

Totally agree with the last post. If the previous poster is happy with a crook running our football club shame on them...Ridsdale AND Bates...can be summed up in one word...corrupt. The minority he talks about is a farcical statement...obviously not home and away....probably not even home. In fact the poster sounds like Bates himself! I wonder if this chap would have been happy with 5-8p in the £, as a small business Bates sent under 4 years ago? Doesn't he understand that people like The Guardian, BBC, ITV, Football League, FA etc etc kick us from pillar to post due to the antics of individuals like Bates who should have been kicked out of football long ago.They asked for transparency, he couldn't provide it...ask yourself why and WISE UP.

Personally I for one am not happy about Bates owning or running the club, this has absolutely nothing to do with his Chelsea past, I'm more bothered about him being a dodgy get and outspoken when he needs to wind his neck in

BUT what I will say is that regardless of what we think of him and how he has done it, he has got OUR club financially stable again. You look at most business owners and if you seriously think they haven't cut corners, done things via the "brown envelope" etc you are seriously naive! When the new rules come in about living within your means and not over spending, regardless of how rich your club owner is, we will be one of the few clubs to prosper and possibly we'll see some huge casualties - yes clubs like man city will find creative ways of getting past it but a lot won't....our time will come again. Whatever you think of Bates he has stabilised the club through ruthless (and no doubt sometime dodgy, that I don't deny) means. I see it day in day out with business owners in other industries so don't be too blinkered and assume he's the only one fiddling things to work in our favour, again I'm not saying it's right but personally I'd rather have someone own us who is dodgy stabilising us than a ridsdale type who just gets giddy with blank cheques and jeopardises whether we have a club to go support at all

Can the football league or fa be charged/sued for failing to provide a duty of care?
Murky waters indeed but I find it astounding they know so little when they
write the rulebook.
I for one am happy if the secrecy is in the good of the club in order to move forward however I would love to know what benefits the investors gain through the secrecy.
Who here thinks bates owns ER in a roundabout way and what about TA?

Just hope the league throw the book at Bates at some point !

I don't think anyone can claim to know what the MINORITY or MAJORITY of our supporters think re Bates, but I do know that at the actual MATCHES I have attended it is indeed a small MINORITY of supporters who seem to be making complaints, whilst the vast MAJORITY of the supporters present rightly get behind the team on the pitch.

And as for the LUST?

When did they actually put any money into Leeds United...??

Lets face it Bates will be there till HE wants out (or nature takes it's path) personally I hope it's the former, and still KNOW that Ken Bates is the reason we still have a team to support who are heading upwards......

My head isn't in the clouds, but it's also no stuck where the proverbial sun don't shine like some of you people who won't move on....

"I think you will find that the minority is in fact a majority in wake of the recent poll by the LUST...
Get your head out of the clouds and respect other peoples opinions before spouting nonsense you know very little about"

And just HOW MANY people did LUST actual canvass then? Just their members, no doubt? That's a bit like asking the conservative party how many of them like Cameron??

I DO respect other people's opinions, but it would seem LUST do not, which is why I for one am not a member, but I have been a loyal supporter for well over 40 years now, how many of their members have?

10 Oct 2011 20:29:01
why is every body so bothered about leeds uniteds business, makes me laugh there are dozens off clubs millions of pounds in debt and others that have done exactly what we did by going into administation, such is life other companys do it day in day out, on the playing front we had 14 points after 10 games last season a 6-4 defeat at home to preston and a 5-2 loss at oakwell so get a grip its early days we can still make the top 6 under grayson will bates incharge MOT

What a fool you really are - no true supporter would s**t in their own garden but you condone this..? People keep talking of 3 points off a top 5..! firstly we have to win this game v Birmingham away and we have to sustain that run into 8-10 matches - remember 3 points of top 5 and 3 points off bottom 5...!

To the bloke calling someone a fool have a bit of faith and believe were gna win games .

Did not say i condoned it but its done now move on, and yes i may be a fool but theres bigger things going on in thé world than ken bates dealings, its people like you that live in cloud cuckoo land and are not happy unless theres slagging the team off wanna be managers, dolls head

10 Oct 2011 20:01:58
I think it's now time for Ken Bates to go. The man is corrupt and rotten to the core. Think we ought to look back in history to get the answer we all deserve by looking at the chelsea scenario. This man as denied owning Leeds united now for 6 years when all evidence points at him owning firms in onshore accounts. Well, your times up. Sell up please and go because we're going nowhere under you.

It also proves my suspicions that he owns Elland Road and Thorpe Arch and had the cheek to ask the council for 15-million to buy them back of himself lol... he deserves to wear a mask on matchdays

How can anybody disagree with the program on bbc tonight. Anybody who as been made redundant by these corrupt buisness methods should have it done to them and see how they like it. Buisnessmen like bates make me sick and lower society as a whole, besides the man called leeds fans morons, something i won't forget. Bet you agree with watching leeds is like having sex, slow on arrousel. I want premiership football not predmature ejaculation.

Get it into your heads....he owns the club and is going nowhere unless someone buys the club from him!

He can't and won't just walk away, he can't be sacked, the club is owned by him! It would be like me saying I don't like you so get out of your house

10 Oct 2011 20:00:37
Blimey! Did you watch that??

What an absolute farce and comedy sketch the past 7 years of bates' reign have been! What a sneaky, under hand b*****d he is!!

Why what happened? I must have missed something...

What did we miss so we can see the repeat what channel plz

Inside out special on who owns Leeds united on BBC one.

Watched it and it said absolutely NOTHING new. Waste of time. Leave Bates alone and let him get on with his job.

Seeing as 5 have disagreed with the above - go on then, tell me something that you saw on that programme that you didn't already know.

10 Oct 2011 19:46:09
does that guy who keeps appearing on the
cartoonize play for leeds

10 Oct 2011 14:51:28
just to reassure the leeds faithful JONNY HOWSON will sign a new 3 year contract soon and become leeds highest earner on 11k a week, putting him slightly ahead of the elland road hero luciano becchio, i hear the terms he wants changing are for us to show more ambition regarding holding onto our big game players ie snoddy, becchio, mc'cormack, clayton, lonners etc, he has stated many times he LOVES leeds united as much as the air he breaths, and would rather sign the right contract at elland road rather than leave as he hopes to fulfill his ambitions with his hometown club, fingers crossed we get this one rite and dont make the same mistakes as previous... leeds4life

Here here, i'll drink to the that.

What a load of bull you chat mate? ye of course he's gonna sign a 11k a week contract when he's been offered 20 plus one's from the prem?! pull your head out of your backside pal, wake up and smell the coffee, he's leaving dont be such a sad sap and deal with it players like him come and go we'll soon find someone to fill his spot.

No one is offering him that. You really think Becchio wouldn't of had better offers when he re-signed? He did. Swansea for one.

Surely the management and directors of our beloved club would not allow one of our most talented and valuable players to enter the final year of his contract before offering him a new improved one. That would surely get vultures hovering to steal them on the cheap or even worse for nothing. Surely no forward thinking ambitious club would allow that to happen? Oh s**t I just remembered !!

10 Oct 2011 08:59:36
Go have a lie down.... Johnny Howson is NOT good enough to play in our team now, never mind the Premiership. If the rumour was concerning Clayton it would be a more realistic rumour.

Was u saying that last seasonm when he was superb ummmmmmm i doubt it

The role Howson plays lets Clayton do what he wants, a good leader knows when to sit back and let others shine, he covers the ground he is required to, works hard and never gives up on Leeds, something that cannot be said for such "Leeds" fans as yourself!