If the FIA does not address his concerns about governance, David Richards, the chairman of Motorsport UK, has threatened legal action against the world’s largest organization.
Richards’ action comes after he was one of the FIA members who was barred from a world council meeting last week for refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
The 72-year-old claimed in a letter to members of Motorsport UK, a FIA member, that Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s actions violated the organization’s own statutes and that they do not adhere to “gold-standard standards of integrity, accountability, and transparency in sports governance.”
Former Formula 1 team boss Richards, the chairman of Prodrive, added that he intends to “remind the FIA of their responsibilities and hold them accountable in the name of the sport and their members around the world.”
Ben Sulayem has been the subject of numerous controversy since his election in December 2021, according to Richards’ letter.
His views on women, his approach to F1, his changes to the accountability laws, his dismissal of several senior figures, and rule changes regarding F1 drivers’ public behavior have been among them.
Richards claimed that Ben Sulayem has “distinctly failed” to fulfill his campaign promises.
Those included a hands-off president who behaved in a non-executive manner, delegating the FIA’s running to a professional team, appointing and empowering a capable CEO, and full accountability of the actions.
He cited the firing or “resignation under an opaque cloud” of several senior FIA figures as “progressively worsening” the situation at the organization.
He continued, “The audit and ethics committees have been severely limited and now lack autonomy from the president’s authority, while the UK representative, who challenged certain issues, was immediately removed along with the chair of the audit committee.”
He claimed that “being required to sign a new confidentiality agreement that I regarded as a “gagging order” was the “final straw” in the writing of his letter.
Richards claimed to have already signed a confidentiality agreement when he was appointed to the 2021 world motorsport council and that he still adheres to the terms of Article 4 and the confidentiality agreement.
He continued, “The new confidentiality agreement went much further than this, and I was given the notice that I would be denied entry to the upcoming World Motorsports Council meeting if I didn’t sign it.”
He claimed that the most important clauses were:
He continued, “The FIA leadership needs to be clear about the questions that our Motorsport UK lawyers and French legal counsel have raised.”
Where does the FIA Statutes allow an elected member to be barred from a meeting? “It is very disappointing to report that we have still not received an answer to these or the fundamental question I asked.
We have informed the FIA that we will be filing for additional legal action unless they address the concerns we have.
Richards acknowledged that in the previous three years, some sensitive information had been obtained through the media.
No one, not least of all me, would dispute the fact that some situations must be classified as sensitive and confidential for external release, he added.
“We shouldn’t, however, allow that fundamental truth to be abused in order to impose a blanket gagging order on volunteer council and committee members.” A member-owned, member-driven organization should not act in this manner.
Following Richards’ removal from the world council, the FIA reissued a response it gave to BBC Sport last week.
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Source: BBC
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