They were actually cold-calling potential buyers just as the deal to buy it was done. They saw Leeds rather like an off-plan apartment that you can buy and flip the next day for a tidy profit.

I thought, this is not going where it should be … I saw a lot of people that are interested, all decent people with money, with experience and I thought why don't I try and put something together, of the right people that have the right interest and the experience and the financial ability and could actually put up with GFH because that takes a lot, to move it forward and this is where the Sport Capital idea came from.

I approached the existing people. I said, look, I don't want to be too much involved, but I think we can put together a group of people. Why don't we try and approach GFH and say to them let's do this and that's how Sport Capital became involved.

What [GFH] said and what they were really doing were two very different things … With Sport Capital, the intention was with all goodwill and with all the right people in place to purchase the club and to work with GFH as a minority shareholder. One of the things that Sport Capital wanted to do was extend Brian's contract. I think Brian's a fantastic manager and I saw the development he did with the youth. What I wanted to see at Leeds was stability in the playing side and to give someone time to build. I really did think Brian was the right person and it's a shame what happened.

So, we were looking at that, we were looking at stability, we were looking at all these things. The lawyers had been appointed, the draft notices to acquire the stadium had been sent so this was happening. There was a lot of 'Oh, you know David was just releasing this for the media.' That's not true, the financing was there to get the stadium, the money was there, the actual administration of the legalities had been done in terms of the notes you need to issue to purchase the stadium to exercise the option.

Behind the scenes Hisham and other people at GFH were completely breaching the exclusivity agreement and talking to lots of other people, many of them in Saudi which raises the question did they ever really intend to sell it to us or were we just a stopgap to fund another hole in the finances whilst they finished negotiations with someone else.

It was clear that not everything in the GFH Capital garden was lovely.

On 18 May 2014, with Haigh saying he was considering his future options, GFH lured him to Dubai with a trumped-up job offer relating to the setting up of a GFH operation in London. Haigh claimed to have copies of WhatsApp exchanges with Hisham Alrayes, in which Alrayes suggested Haigh just had to pass the formality of an interview with a senior GFH figure and the London job would be his.

Haigh:

There were various legal actions that had been started by my side against them in England. Things were getting a bit ugly, we'd fallen out. They then started a kind of a long, long track of trying to get me to come, first to Bahrain and then to Dubai. This was text messages, e-mails. 'Come here, we'll sort it out, you know we're all friends here, there's no need to go to the courts etc.' I believed them because I had no particular reason not to.

I was supposed to be meeting a 70-year-old ex-UAE government minister who had just joined the board of the company who was going to settle all the disputes, pay me all the money they owed me, etc. This is what I'd been told.

And in walks a young gentleman, about 18 or 19 … I'm thinking, this is not the 70-year-old ex-minister. He then just looked at me and said, 'Come with me.' He never actually … said the word 'arrest'.

It's not like the Dubai that you see on the TV. This is the real Middle East … It's an old police station, lots of screaming, lots of shouting, people being pushed around … Ultimately another person comes in and says that 'You've been accused of taking money from your employer. Where's the money?'

Once he landed in Dubai, Haigh was detained, without being charged, in appalling conditions for twenty-two months. He was accused of fraud and embezzlement with a sum of US$6.7m mentioned.

GFH Capital chief executive Jinesh Patel said that he uncovered a missing £3m and false invoices soon after he took over in Dubai the previous February. Patel said that GFH alerted its financial regulator and police in both Dubai and England after discovering the alleged fraud.

GFH alleged that Haigh falsified payments to four separate parties for a range of services. Haigh faced claims that a spate of illicit bank transfers authorised by him were made to accounts unconnected to the companies or people supposedly receiving the funds.

The firms and individuals concerned, Lincoln Associates, Millnet Limited, GPW and David Murray, a lawyer with Fountain Court chambers, provided GFH with a variety of services including legal advice, IT support and investigative work.

Among the investigations carried out by GPW was one entitled 'Project Athena', a dossier compiled on Massimo Cellino, an Italian businessman who was preparing his own bid for United.

GFH claimed that Project Athena was commissioned by Haigh on 6 October 2013, four months before Cellino's interest in United became public and almost two months before Haigh reached his own agreement for Sport Capital to buy Leeds.

The cost of that single investigation, one of nine carried out by GPW between August 2012 and October 2013, was more than £36,000, though GFH says the fee was never paid.

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Haigh was also accused of falsifying fee notes relating to a series of court cases, totalling more than £1m. The cases included 'LUFC v Ken Bates and others', 'Jct 24/7 v LUFC' and 'Mark Taylor v LUFC'.

Haigh spoke of his incarceration:

I'm in … Bur Dubai police station which is a temporary detention facility. They're supposed to keep people there for a couple of weeks maximum … I was there 15 months … No investigation, there was no questioning of me. There was questioning on the first day and then the morning after the first day and that was it, nothing until 15 months later … Any kind of resemblance that you would have of a normal system where if you're accused of something you get the right to your lawyer, translation, none of that. You never expect to have to go through something like this so obviously when it happened to me, my friends, my family contact the British Embassy.

They came I think after the second or third day. And being somewhat of a naive Brit and having lived abroad for most of my life, I expected them to come in, probably rather foolishly, something like James Bond and sort this out … The first thing they said to me … 'The best we can do is move you to a different jail because you're likely to be here for two years until they actually investigate and decide if they're going to charge you.'

I was myself, my family, politicians on my behalf, for pushing and pushing them because it was just so ridiculous but then when I realised that I wasn't getting anywhere, I just stopped … you have very limited access to the phone, very limited. You would have one phone sometimes between 60-150 people.

I was told at the beginning by the Embassy, by the Foreign Office, and I was told by some of the guards and my lawyers, 'Say nice things about Dubai, play along, be good, tell everyone how great the guards are.' If you look at my Twitter account from that time, people on my behalf were running it outside on my website, there was all this lovely stuff about the guards, we even got my lawyers to write them a nice piece, good to put on their wall. This was all nonsense … The reality of what was happening was what I was telling the embassy on a contemporaneous basis and what I was writing to a court in Dubai called the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) - it's where some retired English judges go - I was writing them letters saying I'm being tortured, I'm being abused.

I mean like punches and kicks and bangs over the head with sticks and things like that. In terms of torture to myself, three distinct episodes. One was on the first day, one was a couple of weeks later and … about 2 to 3 weeks after that and they all followed the same kind of format … being multiply tasered, beaten around the head and the back and the legs and kicked on the floor, stamped on. I mean just basically severely beaten up but the tasering was one of the worst things because it was not once, it was again and again and again, repeated tasers, by repeated people.

I saw that and worse done to other prisoners … That to me was the worst thing, because if someone punches you in the face it's not great but in a way you get a little bit used to it.

After the first maybe three months when … the police realised that I was little bit well known in England and 'Oh dear what have they done?' They then start being nice … As part of that they would take me out of the main area and let me sometimes sit with guards and let my lawyers see me for a little bit longer. When I would sit in the guard staff room I would see a lot … I would see them regularly beat, and I use the word torture, really severely.

Haigh was deprived of many of his basic human rights and denied access to his own resources so that he could not pay for lawyers. He was found guilty at a trial conducted in Arabic (and therefore unintelligible to Haigh). He was not permitted to speak nor allowed to cross examine his accusers or to see any of the purported evidence against him. At times he was not even permitted to attend.

Haigh appointed international accountancy firm PwC to represent him. They sent a report to the Dubai courts which concluded that there was no evidence of fraud and that the allegations should be withdrawn. The report was ignored.

Ten days after his conviction, Haigh thought there was a positive turn of events. He had received a Royal pardon and was due to fly home. However, just a few days before his repatriation, GFH filed a Twitter slander charge against him and almost six months later he was still detained in a squalid Dubai cell, where he was tortured, beaten, sexually abused and denied legal representation. He was eventually released with no charges ever brought.

Sport Capital lodged a £33m claim against GFH for damages relating to the collapse of its deal. It claimed GFH breached the terms of the Share Purchase Agreement by covertly negotiating the sale of United to Cellino's Eleonora Sport Limited.

Sport Capital's claim was lodged with the High Court in London on 29 January 2015 and the firm sought to have GFH Capital's English assets frozen, saying:

We expect GFH to attempt to evade service of the claim from their Dubai HQ which will mean ultimately we have to serve this claim on them through diplomatic channels.

Our contention is that the actions of GFH and specifically of Hisham Alrayes delayed and then destroyed the Sport Capital deal.

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This was a deal which would have ensured a sustainable and successful future for the club and that included the almost immediate purchase of Elland Road, the terms of which had been agreed.

The SPA provided for Sport Capital to fund the working capital of the club throughout the term of the SPA, which they did. The SPA also specifically prevented GFH from entering any negotiations or discussions with any other parties regarding the sale of Leeds United shares.

The legal action against GFH states that the exclusivity of the SPA was breached by GFH which continued to pursue the sale of Leeds United to third parties including Mr Khaled Al-Baltan, then the president of the Al Shabab Football Club in Saudi Arabia.

It further claims that GFH's separate negotiations with Massimo Cellino and Eleanora Sport Ltd were in breach of the agreement.

GFH responded:

The latest press release issued by Sport Capital looks like an attempt to divert attention from the allegations against Mr Haigh which are being heard in the Dubai courts. He and Sport Capital appear to have commenced cases in London although we have not been served with any papers.

As Mr Haigh is facing criminal and civil proceedings in Dubai, we do not want to say anything which would jeopardise any proceedings.

Haigh continued to accuse GFH, as reported by David Conn on 25 February 2015:

Haigh's application to Westminster magistrates court seeks arrest warrants to be issued against the Gulf Finance House chief executive, Hisham Alrayes, and Jinesh Patel, chief executive of … GFH Capital. Haigh claims they 'conspired to defraud' by 'agreeing dishonestly to deceive' him into travelling to Dubai with the promise of a job for GFH, when in fact they were planning to have him arrested and 'procuring indefinite imprisonment, without charge, in very poor conditions'.

GFH accepts that it did inform the police in Dubai about its allegations, and when Haigh arrived at the GFH Capital office on 18 May last year … he was arrested. Haigh has been held since then with three other prisoners at the Bur Dubai police station in a cell built for two, among 60 prisoners in a block designed to accommodate 32. He has not been charged and says he has not even been questioned by police. In his application, Haigh says he fears influential people in Dubai connected to GFH have been involved in his arrest and will seek a maximum sentence for him; GFH denies having any such influence.

Haigh's private prosecution application alleges that Alrayes and Patel 'schemed and actively took steps to convince me to fly to Dubai' last May by offering the prospect of the job in London and payment of outstanding salary, expenses and commissions that Haigh claims he was owed … Haigh sets out a series of exchanges with Alrayes on WhatsApp instant messaging, in which he claims Alrayes told him the London posting would be his if he impressed in an interview with a senior GFH figure, Dr Khalid AlKhazraji.

The statement claims that on 11 May, Alrayes messaged Haigh to say: 'Hi, for GFH I told Jinesh to arrange for meeting with Dr Khalid to see you for GFH office in London. Hence no settlement will be required [of money Haigh claimed was outstanding] but resume [sic] of salary.'

Haigh claims he sought repeatedly to clarify that GFH did have this role for him and that on 17 May, Patel messaged him saying: 'It is up to you on whether the potential role being mooted is worth pursuing. Hisham wants to back you with a budget if you accept.'

In August 2015, Haigh was convicted of 'breach of trust' and sentenced to two years in jail. He was acquitted in March 2016 and further acquitted on appeal in May.

A month later, GFH told the Yorkshire Evening Post that Haigh's case was simply about his embezzling their funds and that 'He is a convicted fraudster and is subject to freezing injunctions which he has never applied to set aside.' Haigh strenuously denied this, claiming that he had indeed made applications to set aside the freezing orders.

In July 2018, Justice Sir Jeremy Cook upheld a judgement in Dubai that Haigh had 'misappropriated funds from the claimant in a sum with a value approximating US$5m by creating or procuring the creation of false invoices and procuring payment of those false invoices from funds belonging to the claimant.'

Haigh was ordered to pay the equivalent of £1.94m and £2.0m plus interest and costs.

Haigh:

Since I've come back … I'm often a defence witness for extradition … I've done probably about 10 court cases, a recent one in Scotland where I've given evidence … I put my statement in of what happened to me. Now recently in a case in England the UAE accepted my evidence. They did not challenge the evidence that I had given.

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Going back to what you said about being gay, this is one of the reasons why I start to fall out with my former employer, because when I was at Leeds, I made the club one of the first football diversity champions for Stonewall. So we had a day when Robbie Rogers who is one of Leeds' former players, came along and he launched his charity called Beyond It ... It was a very popular day. Leeds fans were fantastic ... That was one of the days that really upset and it was probably foolish of me. They were an Islamic bank, I perhaps shouldn't have done that but as far as we are concerned we were purchasing the club and I now know that one of the reasons why I had angered them so much is because I was gay.

My legal team tried to launch a private prosecution in the UK and I gave a lot of evidence. That evidence was translated into Arabic, talked about my sexuality, talked about what was being done to me, the conditions, translated by them into Arabic, brought to the police station, given to the guards and they were told he was gay.

It was used as a reason that I was being hit and I was being beaten … I was sexually abused … I had Coca Cola bottles placed in places that they shouldn't be placed in.

The prisoners began to know so I then had difficulties in the jail because again the majority of the people there were from the region. They were not ex-pats so that caused me great difficulty but what it also meant is that I couldn't have my partner come visit me.

I had asked the court in Dubai, the DIFC court … can you not have my hearings in public, because it puts us at risk. The English courts had granted us that, but the Dubai court said no. And not only did they say no, they then put it on YouTube so there was a YouTube Arabic court hearing about the case setting out the details, which caused me so many problems.

It was a farce of a trial … Up until September [2017], I've never once been allowed to appear in court, not once. Every opportunity was taken to stop me having lawyers. It was a part of comprehensive disablement ... lock me up, shut me up, stop my access to lawyers and then when I did have my access to lawyers stop my access to money to pay the lawyers.

When I came back, I spent five and a half months in hospital and, even though I actually do not respect the court whatsoever, and it's wholly corrupt as far as I'm concerned, still I'm engaging with it. As a lawyer, I'm trying to be respectful, engaging with it. Now we told them that I was going to hospital … They decided to hold the hearing whilst I was in hospital. I had lawyers that were trying to come on the records, they were trying to become a regulated lawyer in the UAE so they could represent me, English lawyers. They ignored them. There was a deliberate attempt by the DIFC to stop me going to that hearing, stop me having lawyers … We appealed when I came out of hospital and in mid-September we won that appeal so that judgment has been set aside.

This judgment was from a court and a judge who had not let me go to court at all, ever. They had not let me file a full defence. They had not let me file a counterclaim. They had not let me file my evidence, of which there is a lot. They had essentially not let me do anything … Back to the judgement, it's wiped away, it's not there, it was a judgment from a hearing which I didn't take part in at all and there was no defence. So, of course he's going to come to those conclusions when there is no defence.

Had my former employers believed I had done something wrong, report me to the police in England, go about the normal process. Why do you have to fly me to the Middle East to put me into a system that is known to be corrupt, that is accepted by our own courts in England because extraditions since 2011 will not extradite a British person to the UAE, because in their own words there's a real risk of torture and unfair trials.

Haigh lost 59 kilos in weight (in excess of nine stone) during his ordeal and the mental scars are permanent. During 2017, he had an arthroscopy on a knee shattered during one of many beatings he took at the hands of prison guards or inmates. He required further surgery on a broken cheekbone while his ribs, chest, right hand and teeth all took a pounding. Morphine numbed the physical pain, but the psychological damage was deep and he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. At one point he was taking up to 15 pills a day for depression and sleeping problems in addition to the morphine.

He was admitted to the Priory hospital in September 2016 and placed on suicide watch. Haigh said the abuse in prison stopped just short of sexual assault but for three months he attended rape counselling.

In early 2017 Haigh won a long-standing fight to have some of his assets unfrozen. In addition to winning leave to appeal against the orders of the DIFC Court, Haigh also applied successfully to the High Court in London to gain access to his money to cover medical costs and legal fees.

He lodged a formal dossier of his treatment in Dubai with the United Nations panel, which examines arbitrary incarceration and abuse of prisoners in jails around the world. He teamed up with Australian marketing consultant Radha Stirling, founder of the Detained in Dubai campaign group, to establish Stirling-Haigh in an effort to fight for those denied their basic human rights.

In November 2017 the Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit confirmed that it had received an allegation of torture of a British national in Dubai between May 2014 and April 2016. They began investigations into allegations made by Haigh and others relating to accusations of torture, rape, and abuse of prisoners in Dubai jails.

On New Year's Eve 2018, Stirling resigned as a director of Stirling Haigh as their partnership foundered. Weeks earlier Haigh's biography had been deleted from the Detained in Dubai website and he established a new company called Detained International on January 11.

In February, Haigh launched a Twitter tirade saying that 'innocent victims' were falling foul of campaign groups masquerading as legal experts. In the now-deleted set of messages, Haigh said there was a danger of sensitive cases being exploited by those who had left a succession of clients in a 'terrible situation'. Among those he took aim at was a 'group pretending to be lawyers'.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) require solicitors to hold a practising certificate if 'your involvement in the firm or the work depends on your being a solicitor; you are held out explicitly or implicitly as a practising solicitor; you are employed explicitly or implicitly as a solicitor.' They reported that Haigh had not applied for permission to continue his legal work after his practising certificate lapsed in 2014.

'He has not got a practising certificate at this time and has not had one since 2014, which means he cannot act as a solicitor carrying out any of the six reserved legal activities,' said a spokesman for SRA.

At the time GFH was pursuing Haigh through the courts to recover the frozen funds and regularly described him as a convicted fraudster.

Leeds United can certainly pick the men with whom to be associated!

A dodgy bank which couldn't manage its own money and a convicted fraudster … it was a case of 'Be careful what you wish for.' After years of wishing he'd sail off into the sunset, some were even guilty of the cardinal sin of harking back to the happy old days of Captain Birdseye. At least you knew where you were when you supped with a devil with no pretence as to his intentions!

Part 1 Clearing the Decks - Part 3 Manager Eater - Results, table and transfers