'The Glazer family have said they own the shares but there is no way of verifying this.'

The 2010 Christian Aid Week Report looks at financial secrecy and football, and offers a number of case histories, including the ones reprinted below.

Manchester United

The most successful English club on and off the pitch, Manchester United is also the Premier League’s most secretive club.

Managed by Sir Alex Ferguson, the club’s ultimate owners are two entities, Red Football Limited Partnership and Red Football General
Partner Inc.

The Glazer family have said they own the shares but there is no way of verifying this.

The companies are based in Nevada, which boasts of ‘a compelling array of benefits available to Nevada business owners such
as privacy, tax savings, convenience and flexibility’, according to one of the state’s company formation agents.

For the Glazers this flexibility means shareholder information does not need to be disclosed and virtually no taxes are required to be paid. Details about the identities of those associated with the parent
companies are not available for public scrutiny.

This fuels suspicion and distrust between supporters of the club and its owners, made worse because the Glazers bought the club in a classic private-equity-style leveraged deal.

In other words, only a small amount of cash was involved. Instead, the new owners borrowed large sums to finance the deals, and that money will have to be repaid, in all likelihood with cash flow from the club.

Borrowings

It means that what was once the richest club in the world with no debt is now struggling under £716m of borrowings, some of which have punitive interest charges attached.

Furthermore the club has sold one of its best players, not reinvested money back into its playing squad, and may well be forced to sell its training ground to finance the borrowings.

The situation parallels that faced by its bitter rivals Liverpool – also the subject of a leveraged buy-out by American financiers.

At Manchester United, the Glazers recently launched a £500m bond to help reduce the debt. According to the bond prospectus, under the terms of the refinancing, the new bonds include terms that allow the Glazers to transfer £70m to the holding company, Red Football
Joint Venture Ltd.

The release of the information in the prospectus has sparked a wave of protest against the Glazers. Serious discussions are now underway with wealthy supporters looking to organise a buy-out.

Fans are further angered by information in the prospectus about financial dealings over the past five years which was not otherwise available because of the club’s opaque offshore ownership arrangements.

Leeds United

As Leeds languishes in the third tier of English football, the fact that its ultimate parent company is based through a series of tax havens could be held to be the only way that the fallen giant can get a taste of Europe.

The Yorkshire team takes the prize as the most secretive club in League One. Indeed the club takes secrecy to a new level.

The club’s chairman is Ken Bates; the ownership of his previous club, Chelsea, was similarly opaque and offshore.

Companies House documents name three offshore entities and a lawyer based in Monaco as holding shares in Leeds. But crucially, the individuals who ultimately own the shares are not identified.

When Leeds United was acquired following its ruinous football and financial slide, it was bought by Forward Sports Fund (FSF), once registered in the Cayman Islands and administered from Switzerland.
FSF, which owns more than 70 per cent of Leeds, is based in Geneva at the office of Chateau Fiduciare, which administers the fund. But the location of its registration is unclear.

Other Leeds shareholders are based in Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands. Leeds has paid back a significant amount of its debt
burden since Bates became involved with the club and has enjoyed some success this season, knocking Manchester United out of the FA Cup.

Rules

But it still does not publish its owners and under Football League rules – different from the Premiership – it does not have to.

To be fair, even Ken Bates himself seems a bit uncertain about ownership. While the English football authorities may be content to leave Leeds fans in the dark, a court in Jersey can be commended for having attempted to bring matters out into the open.

In January 2009, Bates’ solicitors told Jersey’s Royal Court that he owned one of the ‘management shares’ in the FSF, and a lawyer for Bates subsequently confirmed that there were only two such shares in existence, making him joint owner.

Then in May 2009, Bates changed his mind and told the court in a sworn statement that there had been ‘an error’, that there were in fact 10,000 shares in FSF not two, and that in any case none of them at all belonged to him. Leeds fans have expressed grave concern that they have no idea where money is going.

• Download or read the full report (PDF)

• Read the reports recommendations

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

• Look at actor Nicholas Hoult's report from Kenya