Tuesday 29 March 2022 3:21 pm

Staines Town FC halts operations amid claims its owners breached sanctions and modern slavery laws

Staines Town Football Club (STFC) has halted all operations after claiming its owners failed to comply with sanctions and breached the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The football club said it had been forced to suspend all primary operations amid an investigation into investment manager, Downing LLP, which acquired the club in 2008.

“Until the necessary government and institutional investigations have proven beyond reasonable doubt that Downing LLP is not funding modern slavery… we must temporarily suspend our primary operations until the conclusion of this process,” the club said.

The non-league club also said it will be boycotting its Downing owned Wheatsheaf Park stadium, as it vowed “not go back to Wheatsheaf Park and play beneath the bloodied shadow of the profits of slavery, child abuse and all else.”

The comments come after Downing refuse multiple requests from STFC to acquire the freehold for Wheathsheaf Park,

In a statement, STFC said it also has reason to believe Downing had breached sanctions legislation, by continuing to work with an entity linked to the Russian Government.

STFC also said it had reason believe Downing had made funds and economic resources available to a sanctioned individual, as it claimed the investor engaged in activities that helped that individual “circumvent an asset freeze”.

“Everyone associated with such practices must be stopped in their tracks and brought to book with urgency,” the football club said.

“This needs to start with the enablers of such acts who appear to operate with complete impunity under our noses, here in the United Kingdom. Turning a convenient blind eye to these abhorrent practices must come to an end.”

STFC also slammed the investment manager for its investment in “a business that was found guilty of the bribery and corruption of FIFA officials” as it said it is clear that Downing have “no regard whatsoever for a community football club or for the greater good of football”.

The statements come amid a longstanding dispute between Downing LLC and the Middlesex County Football Association club, after the London headquartered investment manager first acquired the team in 2008.

The club said it believes Downing’s “strategy” in acquiring STFC has been to “execute the purposeful and controlled decline of STFC and thus realise the land value at Wheatsheaf Park through development”.

The club claimed Downing laid the path for its financial decline by removing “several major sources of club revenue and facilities that should have been available to STFC”.

“As a result of the clubs downward spiral, we have suffered defamation, ridicule, threats and abuse, much of which we have had to accept in the knowledge that the general public were not aware of the appalling depths to which Downing LLP operations have seemingly sunk to via its apparent funding of the most heinous, nefarious and barbaric crimes within our society,” STFC said.

Downing LLP have been approached for comment.

UK Government seizes Russian-owned £38m super yacht in Canary Wharf

Share this article

Subscribe to the Morning Wire newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.