Conflict of interest leaks into West Ham United takeover as Richard Keys shares news – Finance Expert
We’re delighted to welcome football finance expert Dr Daniel Plumley as our exclusive West Ham United columnist. Each week he’ll be giving his views on the biggest talking points at the London Stadium...
Dan Plumley has insisted that conflicts remain at every turn after it was revealed that West Ham United used club money to donate to the Conservatives in 2022.
Richard Keys recently shared the news on his Twitter and was left asking the question of how many of the fans would be happy, as well as wondering who made the decision.
Plumley admitted that it is impossible to separate football from politics, with well-connected people in positions of power with the dynamic potentially changing again should Daniel Kretinsky gain controlling power.
“I think this is where you look at it and go, we talk about how we would like to separate football from politics but we absolutely cannot,” he exclusively told West Ham Zone.
“We can see it here, you’ve got owners at the club that are very well connected to certain people, not just in government but all the way around different industries and now you’ve got a new government body may be coming over the top and trying to regulate football clubs so you can have conflict of interests at every turn and I think this will be more wider than that story at West Ham.
“These will be the kind of sticking points along the way with the regulator and how it comes to pass if we get to that point. It’s one of those again where you have to join the dots up and see where things are connected and we can’t separate that out so actually to go in and unpick it becomes tricky.
“Back to the takeover situation, if Sullivan is then not in the controlling stake and it is Kretinsky, the dynamic changes again, so you have a lot of moving parts so there will be a few more of those crop up as we move through this whole thing around regulation and ownership structures with links to parties and who these owners deal with.”
David Sullivan recently exploded at the Government over the plans for independent regulation, so it appears strange that this news also follows.
Should Kretinsky take the reins and exercise his option for the stakes from the David Gold estate, he would also earn a controlling stake, something that then puts him in charge.
This is certainly something to watch at the London Stadium.