Former footballer and professional players union executive Darren Wilson has been given a regulatory ban after a watchdog inquiry uncovered serious financial mismanagement at a charity for ex-players.
The Charity Commission said conflicts of interest, poor financial controls and inadequate management oversight at the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) charity had “let down the players they were supposed to be helping”.
The inquiry report covers a period at the end of the last decade when the PFA, a trade union, was racked by controversy over its high executive salaries and alleged failure to do enough for ex-players.
The commission inquiry, publication of which was delayed for a number of years as a result of legal challenges, identified widespread examples of “blurred lines” between the PFA and the PFA charity, which funded union salaries to the tune of £5m a year.
The union’s chief executive Gordon Taylor, and Wilson, its finance director, were trustees of the charity and two more trustees were nominated by the union. Three PFA charity trustees held positions on the union committee which set the salaries of senior executives.
Wilson was the right-hand man of Taylor, a former professional footballer who headed the PFA for 40 years until 2021. Taylor’s £2m-a-year salary, making him reputedly the world’s highest-paid union official, was much criticised amid claims the union did too little to support former players with dementia or in poverty.
Examples of mismanagement cited in the inquiry report included:
Failure to report in the charity’s accounts the transfer of £1.9m paid to the charity by the Football Association in 2017. The charity later said it had “mistakenly” transferred the money to the “accident fund” of the union, which subsequently repaid it.
Several properties owned by the charity were let rent-free to the PFA for several years. The Charity Commission found this had cost the charity £627,000 in unpaid rent, which the PFA subsequently repaid after the commission intervened.
The PFA charity changed its name to The Players Foundation in 2022 after a major restructure took place in the wake of an internal review and the launch of the commission’s investigation into its management and governance affairs.
Angela Ascroft, critical case lead at the Charity Commission, said: “The lines between the charity and PFA union were blurred beyond distinction, resulting in the multiple instances of conflict of interest and mismanagement at the charity.
“Charity trustees have a duty to act in the best interests of their charity, but trustees at the Players Foundation fell dismally short of this expectation and, as a result, let down the players they were supposed to be helping.”
Wilson briefly played professional football for Manchester City and Bury in the early 1990s before qualifying as an accountant. He joined the PFA as director of finance in 2002 before stepping down in 2022.
The inquiry report said Wilson had a “greater culpability” than other trustees because of his professional qualifications and disqualified him from being a trustee or senior manager in a charity. The four-year ban ends in 2027.
In a statement, the Players Foundation said: “When the commission issued its initial findings in September 2022, it accepted that measures had already been implemented by the foundation to deal with any concerns.
“No funds were lost; action was taken to correct the financial position of the charity, and at no stage were beneficiaries adversely affected.”
It added: “The trustees’ focus today remains on delivering the best possible charitable support to all our beneficiaries.”
Wilson was approached for comment.
