David Haigh

Life and work

The story behind the role.

Football executive.

David Lawrence Haigh is an English businessman and former football executive who was managing director of Leeds United Football Club from 2013 to 2014. He was the first openly gay managing director of an English football club. In 2015, Haigh was convicted of breach of trust by a Dubai criminal court over the misappropriation of funds from his former employer, GFH Capital, and served 22 months in prison. In 2018, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts ruled that he had fraudulently diverted company funds via false invoices; the English High Court and Court of Appeal subsequently enforced the ruling, and he was declared bankrupt in 2020. Haigh states that he was tortured and raped while detained; in 2017, a Scottish sheriff in an extradition case accepted his account of his mistreatment. Since his release, he has worked as a self-described human rights lawyer and co-founded the advocacy group Detained International.

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