How Massimo Cellino still controls Leeds United after two bans
Fans can only look on powerless as the convicted tax-evader makes a mockery of the Football League’s owners and directors test to remain in charge at Leeds
Massimo Cellino
How Massimo Cellino complied with his first ban on being a club owner has never been fully explained. Photograph: Clint Hughes/Getty Images
David Conn
Thursday 26 November 2015 18.55 GMT Last modified on Thursday 26 November 2015 19.30 GMT
It has been the cruel, unfathomable fate for Leeds United supporters to experience the many flipsides of the bejewelled Premier League era, like regulars in a struggling pub watching the lights of oligarchs’ yachts pass by, far away at sea. The current agonies being visited on them by the club’s owner, the Italian tax evader and serial manager-sacker Massimo Cellino, include making an apparent mockery of the Football League’s rules governing who is fit and proper to own one of its clubs.
The Football and Premier Leagues’ “owners and directors test†is not, as many fans optimistically believe, a recipe for securing “fit and proper peopleâ€, in a broadly understood meaning of those words. Aware that their rules could be subject to legal challenges – quite rightly, as Cellino has proved – the leagues defined “fit and proper†very narrowly. Essentially, a person is barred from being a director or owner of more than 30% of a club if he or she is convicted of a criminal offence of dishonesty. Many people would like more criteria, and for democratic supporter involvement to be enshrined, but this is basically all we have: football draws the line at convicted crooks.
David Squires on … the troubled recent history of Leeds United
Another week for Leeds United, another week of drama at Leeds United. David Squires looks back at their recent troubles
Read more
Yet here Cellino is, still in charge and calling all shots at Elland Road, while he appeals against his second ban by the Football League, following a second conviction in Italy for criminally dishonest tax evasion in just 19 months, since he was allowed to buy the club last year.
Despite the imminence of this ban should he lose his appeal, as he did following the finding of dishonesty last time he was convicted, Cellino says he has no plans to sell the club and reduce his holding to below 30%. Having tantalised the supporters group Leeds Fans United four weeks ago by saying he would sell the club to the fans – “at costâ€, around £30m, which he says he has put into the club – Cellino within days then declined to grant the fans any exclusivity. Now he says, and the club have confirmed, he will not sell at all until Leeds’ Championship status is secure, probably several months from now, if Steve Evans, his sixth manager at Leeds, achieves that (assuming Evans is still the manager then). They are currently 16th in the Championship.
Advertisement
This timescale apparently takes no account of the fact that Cellino is likely shortly to be banned again from more than 30% ownership. His stance, comments, invitations to potential buyers, public statements, are all based on the position that he owns Leeds United and he will sell at a time of his choosing.
Asked how Cellino complied with the ban last time, a club spokesman said: “He resigned from his post before returning to the club’s board as chairman upon the expiry of his disqualification.â€
That, though, relates only to complying with his ban on being a director, which is easy – come off the board. How he complied with the ban on his being an owner of more than 30% of the shares, then returned to the club when his conviction was “spentâ€, has never been properly explained. The club’s then chairman, Andrew Umbers, said in February that Cellino had “disposed of any personal ‘interests’†in the companies which actually own 75% of Leeds, Eleonora Sports Ltd, and Eleonora Immobilare SPA. No address is given at Companies House for the ultimate corporate owner of the West Yorkshire club, but there is an Eleonora Immobilare SPA listed in Cagliari as a real estate agency. The actual owner of Eleonora Immobilare SPA has never been revealed to supporters, although there have been references to Eleonora ultimately being owned by a Cellino family trust.
Steve Evans Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Steve Evans is the sixth manager of Massimo Cellino’s tenure at Elland Road. Photograph: Craig Brough/Reuters
The Football League, asked how Cellino complied with the ban on ownership last time, would not say, relying on confidentiality between it and its club. “While the exact details of the arrangements put in place by the League board during Mr Cellino’s period of disqualification are private and confidential between the parties,†a spokesman said, “we are satisfied – having seen no evidence to suggest otherwise – that he and the club complied with our requirements and that they have achieved the purpose of the regulations while being proportionate to the period of disqualification that remained outstanding.â€
Advertisement
The campaigning MP on football governance, Damian Collins, told the Guardian he believes this lack of transparency is unsatisfactory, that fans should be entitled to “follow the money†to see who really owns clubs. “The rule is being made a mockery of,†Collins said. “It is a very bad outcome for one of the game’s great clubs to become a laughing stock. The whole Cellino affair is a disgrace for Leeds and the Football League, which should be able to enforce its rules properly.â€
After Cellino disposed of “personal interests†to comply with the ban, there was no announcement of any deal by which he took ownership again. Yet now he is proclaiming publicly that he owns the club, and it appears up to him whether to sell.
To be fair, as the League itself points out, it did try hard to bar Cellino from taking over Leeds in the first place, because he had recently been convicted for evading tax in Sardinia on a yacht, the Nelie. Yet Cellino appealed, on the always straw-clutching grounds that in the absence of the written judgment, which was due 90 days later, his criminal conviction for tax evasion might not have involved dishonesty. Cellino was then allowed to take over the club because Tim Kerr QC, presiding over this appeal, agreed with Cellino that he could have evaded the tax without being dishonest. The probability of that was washed away by the judge, Sandra Lepore, months later in written reasons which found Cellino had “elusive intent†when he evaded £305,000 import duty on the yacht.
The League also points out that its rules have been undermined by the last Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, which in March 2014 reduced from five years to one the period after which a conviction punished by a fine becomes “spentâ€. So by the time the written reasons were seen, a decision made and 28 days allowed for an appeal, Cellino was able to return within a few months. This time, if his appeal fails, he will be not “fit and proper†for only 223 days, despite more criminal cases against him pending in Cagliari.
“This [change in the law] enabled Mr Cellino to return to professional football sooner than would previously have been permitted,†the League said. “It is therefore important that such consequences are taken into account by those who make the law when they are considering changes of this kind.â€
Campaigners fought hard to get even this basic protection in place: no convicted criminals to own our historic clubs. The League says Cellino satisfied this test last time he was banned and no doubt he will again if he loses his appeal. How he does it, and how he can say Leeds United is his to sell now, are questions to which no one appears entitled to an answer.
