Source: PA
Leeds chief defends club ownership structure
Leeds` chief executive Shaun Harvey has told MPs he has no knowledge of the people behind the "mysterious trust" that owns the club - and that chairman Ken Bates does not know either.
Leeds' ownership structure came under the microscope at the culture, media and sport select committee's inquiry into football governance at a hearing at Burnley FC on Tuesday.
Harvey said Leeds is owned by a holding company called FSF, based in the West Indies island of Nevis and owned by three discretionary trusts. The trustees have appointed two men, Patrick Murrin and Peter Boatman, to run the club and they had asked Bates to be chairman.
Harvey told the committee: "I don't know who the beneficiaries of this discretionary trust are, no." Asked if Bates knew, he replied: "Not to my knowledge."
He added: "There is no individual [owner], that's the nature of discretionary trusts - it's a perfectly legal and much-used ownership structure in many different industries, not just football." Harvey defended the structure and said the club had recovered from the financial problems inherited from the Peter Ridsdale era.
He added: "The football club has no debt. There's no indication that there's any desire [from the discretionary trusts] to move away from the investment. I am convinced now that the light at the end of the Elland Road tunnel is the way out rather than the train coming in the opposite direction."
