'Every club to disclose publicly the ultimate controlling individuals, regardless of domicile.'

The recommendations of the 2010 Christian Aid Week Report

To tackle secrecy in the football world, the Football Supporters’ Federation and Supporters Direct call for the following:

• every club to disclose publicly the ultimate controlling individuals, regardless of domicile

• the accountable voice of the local community to be heard by ensuring that a percentage of the club’s shares is held by a not-for-profit supporters’ trust, entitling it to representation on the board of the club

• the linking of payments to transparency.

Every parent controlling entity that a club has should reduce the amount of money it gets from its relevant league.

This will have the effect of a tax on opaque ownership structures. As clubs in the EPL can receive up to £30m a year, the amounts would be significant. In terms of broader global financial secrecy, Christian Aid calls for:

1) Public register of ownership

A public record of each company, corporation, trust, partnership, limited liability partnership, charity and other entity created under law would enable the public to be sure who they are trading with. This would include the following:

• the names of the people who are the ultimate beneficial owners of more than five per cent of the entity about which the declaration is being made

• the full names and addresses of all directors, partners, settlors, trustees, enforcers and other statutory officials who manage these entities

• the full accounts of all entities that enjoy limited liability

• the address where each of these persons is resident.

A competent legal authority would need to be in place to ensure this happened in each location around the world.

2) Country-by-country reporting in the accounts of multinational corporations

Country-by-country reporting would require disclosure of key financial information including turnover, profits and tax payments by each multinational corporation in its annual financial statements for each country in which it operates.

If country-by-country reporting was available then, even if developing countries could not set up their own company registries at this time, much of the information stakeholders would require of the most important entities operating within their jurisdictions would be available.

3) Enhanced automatic information exchange between states

Countries should regularly and automatically share information with other countries where a person or company from that country has an interest in a financial structure registered in its territory.

This information would include the name of the financial structure (trust, company, or foundation), its manager, its bank, who benefits from it, and the income accrued.

Tax havens should be required to share this information with rich and poor countries alike, to enable them to identify and pursue companies and individuals who are hiding money and dodging tax.

We can’t promise that financial transparency will solve all the world’s problems. Of course there are some it would have no impact upon.

What Christian Aid is quite sure about is that enhanced financial transparency, domestically, internationally, in multinational corporation accounts and between nation states, could massively improve the well-being of ordinary people around the world, and most especially in developing countries.

There are many people who would like to know who owns their football club.

The rights of ordinary people need to be recognised as being as important as those of finance. That is a balance that needs redressing in the wake of the current financial crisis, a challenge that the accounting profession must embrace.

These demands may seem onerous, but accountants and tax officials are familiar with complexity, and they get paid for dealing with it. The time for far-reaching change has come.

• Download or read the full report (PDF)

• Read the research into Manchester United and Leeds United

• Visit the Christian Aid Week website - Poverty: Let's End It

• Look at actor Nicholas Hoult's report from Kenya