Football League Chairman Clarke makes ownership admission

[Karl]

Leeds: Owners had been unclear


Football League chairman Greg Clarke has admitted his organisation finds it "difficult" to keep track of who owns their member clubs.

Clarke's admission is contained as part of a Dispatches programme which airs at 8pm on Channel 4 on Monday night.

An undercover team working for the programme posed as a consortium of Indian businessmen interested in buying an English club.

Dispatches say they were offered the chance to invest in one Football League club by a group of intermediaries, and the programme makers claim that when their consortium expressed an interest in buying a second club - in breach of Football Association regulations - the intermediaries offered to set up a front organisation to circumvent those rules.

Clarke was interviewed as part of the programme and said: "We are a simple alliance of 72 football clubs who largely lose money. We don't have hundreds of thousands, let alone millions, to get to the bottom of these complicated organisation structures."
Asked if he is confident that he knows who the
true owners are of every club in the Football League, he added: "No I'm not. There's a process of validation that lets the Football League know who the owners are. Who the owners of the owners are gets more difficult. And who the owners of the owners of the owners are gets even more difficult."

League rules state that "except with the written consent of the Board a person, or any associate of that person, who is interested in a club cannot at the same time be interested in another club".

A person is deemed to be "interested" in a club if they hold or deal in shares of a club; is a member of a club; is involved in any capacity whatsoever in the management or administration of a club; has any power whatsoever to influence the financial, commercial or business affairs or the management or administration of a club or has lent or gifted money to or guaranteed the debts or obligations of a club.

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