Formerly Chelsea chairman Ken Bates — currently ensconced at Leeds F.C. —- has faced charges over the last few years he’s used the latter club’s match day program and in-house TV channel as a bully pulpit from which he can extract a measure of revenge against former employees and critics. On Monday, Ofcom, Britains’s independent regulator for the UK communications industries, cited Bates’ “unfair treatment and unwarranted infringement of privacy” in his war of words with the Leeds United Supporter’s Trust. From the Guardian’s James Riach :
The trust’s chairman, Gary Cooper, has called on the Football Association to “hold Bates accountable” after an Ofcom report found he used his position as the Leeds chairman to access computer files and broadcast private information through the club’s in-house station Yorkshire Radio.
Ofcom, the independent regulator for the UK communications industry, found that two separate interviews with Bates, broadcast in February 2012, “were likely to have materially or adversely affected listeners’ views of Mr Cooper” and that “Mr Cooper’s privacy was unwarrantably infringed”.
A disrepute charge against Bates has been held in abeyance by the FA since August last year and Cooper, who has demanded a full apology, believes Bates has manipulated his authority as club chairman. The charge is being held in abeyance owing to a court case that Bates is bringing against the former Leeds director Melvyn Levi.
Bates was ordered to pay damages to Levi in a separate case last year when he was found to have harassed the former director through his match-day programme notes and Yorkshire Radio.