Leeds United must reveal owners if promoted to Premier League

Leeds will be forced to reveal exactly who owns the club if they are promoted to the Premier League. The league's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, said the body will apply the rules on ownership transparency more strictly than the Football League has done.

Scudamore told the culture, media and sport committee: "The Football League have chosen not to apply the rule as robustly as we think we will be applying it. The Football League have one view of how to interpret that rule and we have a more stern, or harsh, view of what the rule means.

"Our clubs absolutely agree unanimously that we should tell the public who owns the clubs and anything short of that is inadequate. If it arises, if Leeds United on sporting merit deserves to be in the Premier League, we will do all we can to persuade them to stay within the rules."

The Leeds chief executive, Shaun Harvey, told MPs last month the club's owners are a holding company called FSF based in the West Indian island of Nevis and owned by three discretionary trusts. The owners of these trusts are unknown but have appointed two men, Patrick Murrin and Peter Boatman, to run the club and they had asked Ken Bates to be chairman.

Leeds' ownership statement says no single person or company owns more than 10% of the discretionary trusts.