One month after the legal row died down, Wenworth still can’t see eye to eye with its mining boss tennis captain Kirill Klip
We thought it was all over.
Surrey's stockbroker belt made national headlines recently as members of the prestigious Wentworth Golf Club revolted against its owner Reignwood, after the billion pound property firm wanted to enforce a re-joining fee which would've seen current members shell out £100,000 to keep their golfing privileges.
After months of to-ing and fro-ing, the club backed down – but it looks like Wentworth's chief exec Stephen Gibson is still having problems with the outspoken mining boss who leaked private e-mails between members and management to the press.
Kirill Klip, chair of TNL Gold Corp, captain of tennis at Wentworth and one of the most vocal protesters against the membership restructure, was most shocked to find Gibson has called him in for another disciplinary hearing, this time for leaking updates of the row to the national media.
In a letter seen by City A.M., Stephen Gibson said: "It is highly unsatisfactory that you repeatedly refuse to attend a disciplinary hearing."
The golf chief adds: "you have seriously breached confidence by leaking my private letter to you to the national media."
Klip told City A.M. he wasn't sure whether the reference to media links was just about him, or his involvement in the legal row between club members and Chinese owner Reignwood as a whole.
Wentworth Golf Club said: "Wentworth Club is proud of the upstanding code of conduct asked of all its members, as has been set out in the Club Rules throughout its history. As an absolute matter of principle, no member is above these rules."
"The specific detail of any disciplinary hearing is, and has always been, a private matter between the Club and the member involved."
Club members voted unanimously to ask management to drop all legal and disciplinary threats against the City boss in an extraordinary general meeting earlier this year, but the golfing chief isn't budging.
"I thought everything would be dropped now that the new membership scheme has been scrapped" Klip tells The Capitalist. "I'm a very busy man, I don't have time for this nonsense."
He certainly doesn't. Gibson has been trying to pin down the mining boss for months for a hearing, but the crafty City slicker has been refusing to see management unless he's allowed a lawyer.
So, after a month of stand-offs and terse letters between the pair, Gibson is finally let him bring a lawyer to the meeting. The latest letter follows: "you may bring a lawyer with you as an observer, as long as they are a member of the club, as this is a private club matter".
Maybe it's just us, but The Capitalist doesn't think it will be too hard to find one in Virginia Waters.