“Serious mismanagement” at a charity set up to help former and current professional footballers put funds at risk, a Charity Commission inquiry has found.<\/p>\n
The inquiry was launched in 2019 because the Commission had “serious concerns” about how the Professional Footballers’ Association Charity – now called the Players Foundation – was being run.<\/p>\n
It has now published a highly critical report which details a series of failings.<\/p>\n
They include \u00a31.9m of funds from the Football Association being transferred from the charity’s bank account to the Professional Footballers’ Association, the players’ union, “without a clear explanation”.<\/p>\n
The charity also paid about 80% of the union’s operating costs – around \u00a36m annually, including \u00a35m on salaries. “Multiple trustees” – including former chief executive Gordon Taylor – held salaried senior PFA roles, creating a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n
Funding a trade union is not considered a charitable purpose in law, the regulator said.<\/p>\n
The charity also owned properties in Manchester in London which the union occupied rent-free. That cost the charity more than \u00a3627,000 when interest was added, the Commission said.<\/p>\n
The \u00a31.9m and unpaid rent were returned following the Commission’s intervention.<\/p>\n
The charity received an official warning from the regulator in September 2022 “for mismanagement that had taken place from its incorporation in 2013 to the beginning of 2019”.<\/p>\n
A trustee, Darren Wilson – who was the PFA’s director of finance – was disqualified from being a trustee or holding a senior management position in a charity for four years.<\/p>\n
“Remedial actions have now been implemented at the charity, including proper separation from the union, appointment of new trustees, and establishment of a distinct identity for the charity,” the Charity Commission said.<\/p>\n
“It has also adopted a new funding model, after the Football Association and Premier League stopped funding of the charity upon its separation from the union.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Serious mismanagement” at a charity set up to help former and current professional footballers put funds at risk,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-679206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}