Meale, speaking to the Nottingham Evening Post said “The Report has got it wrong, We have carried out an investigation and it has not backed up what is claimed. Meale admitted he had seen the document in question, that forms the basis of the claims made, he went on “the document is just half an A4 piece of paper with some scribbles on it. We have answered a lot of the questions that David Conn asked and have offered to have a full investigation, this is not something we will take lightly”.
Full Article from the Guardian – Dated 20th September 2006
Mansfield face new questions of trust
Wednesday September 20, 2006
The Guardian
David Conn
Guardian investigation suggests League Two club drew money improperly from its community charity.
A Guardian investigation into the running of
The Guardian has seen a document which appears to show that on October 25 2004, Haslam gave instructions that half the wages of two of the club's coaches, Kevin Philliskirk and Paul Holland, should be met by the community trust. Philliskirk, then head of youth development but who has now left the club, says he "never did any work" for the trust, while
The document, comprising handwritten notes, was made by Colin Hogg, a chartered accountant who managed the books for both the club and the trust. Headed "Per Chairman [Keith Haslam] 25/10/04", it listed several football coaches and drivers with figures alongside their names. Then, under the heading "Other Teachers", Philliskirk and
Hogg, who has left the club, told me he could not discuss details of individual payments, but did confirm the notes were his. "This is my working paper, and this is how I work. Having been instructed to make these allocations of people's time, I would have then have gone on to do so." He explained that he always made written records of all such instructions, so there would be "an audit trail" of payments made.
When I first contacted Haslam, he said the two men would have been paid by the trust because they did some community coaching that season. However, he later said he had checked the records and the community trust did not in fact pay for Philliskirk's and
Meale told me he relied on what the club said because, as the trust chairman, his role was to ensure it was running properly but not to know about every payment made.
The Stags Community Trust was set up as an educational, sporting charity based at
The trust did run literacy and numeracy programmes, with tours of Field Mill and football coaching, but at the end of June 2004, the date of the last accounts, nearly £400,000 of the public money had not been spent. Yet now, just two years later, the Stags Community Trust is on its uppers. In May Chris Winterton, a county councillor who is now the trust's third director, wrote to Meale and Haslam arguing that it should cease trading. His letter, which I have seen, said: "The financial position of the Trust is a cause of great concern. Indeed, there has to be a question as to whether the Trust is currently insolvent."
A single consultant, Bernard Wale, has been working for the trust recently, trying to bring more grant funding in. Winterton told me that the trust had been unable to pay Wale for several months, and still owes him about £11,000. Meale told me the figure is "a little less than that" and will be met. "I'm not in the business of not paying staff," he said. Meale added he was keen to ensure nothing "untoward" had taken place and had insisted that the club answer my questions about the trust's payments.
For an east Midlands town club in the lower ranks of League Two, a lot goes on at
The personal loans were in breach of the Companies Act, which prohibits a company from lending money to a director. Haslam has since said he has repaid the loans, although any repayment will not show in the club's published accounts for some time. Last year's accounts, for both
In early 2003,
That, chiefly, was why many in football were astonished when Peter Lee, a respected figure who retired earlier this year as chief executive of the Football Foundation, agreed to become
Still, although
This summer, Sport England audited
Sport
The third and largest non-eligible expenditure was £20,000 paid out of the youth fund to Paul Holland for coaching, although he was listed in the programme during the season as the assistant first-team manager.
Sport England has now ceased funding the programme and the League - still finalising how the FA and Premier League will do so - is keen to stress the £23m investment its clubs make in addition to the £10m, and the League's "well-established monitoring system" of how clubs spend their grant funding.
John Nagle, the League's head of communications, told me: "In the case of
Haslam told me that the transport and accommodation payments were mistakes and the League "got the dates wrong" about
"The club," he insisted, "has not taken money from the Stags Community Trust."
david.conn@guardian.co.uk