Public Warning: Oligarchs In Your Park

CONTROL of sports facilities in London's parks and commons is being secretly passed to executives from a financial services company which works directly with oligarchs and billionaires.

London sports and recreation firm, TFC Leisure claims it is a "community" based company.

It has multi-decade leases for running football and tennis facilities on Barnes Common and Bishops Park in Fulham. It is also seeking government's approval for controversial plans to build a commercial football facility on Tooting Common with a 25 year lease.

Behind The Scenes Changes

But in behind the scenes, two senior executives from the Trident Trust have recently taken on leading roles at the company - prompting concern that the leisure firm is being used as a backdoor for oligarchs looking to launder money and gain control of facilities in London's commons and parks.

Despite being questioned, the founder of TFC Leisure has refused to elaborate on the reasons for the ownership change.

Who Is The Trident Trust?

The Trident Trust is an international financial services firm which has a reputation for discreetly investing money internationally on behalf of wealthy foreign clients.

Last October, it became the subject of one of the biggest ever leaks of secret documents, including revealing the financial affairs of 35 world leaders and 100 billionaires.

In the release, known as the Pandora Papers, nearly 3.3m records came from the Trident Trust which is based in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands.

In 2021 reports linked the Trident Trust to plans by a dictator and his family to secretly buy nearly $700m of property in London.

In March, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported the Trident Trust had been retained to transfer assets into shell companies for senior Russian ministers, oligarchs and a banker wanted for fraud.