David Richards, the chairman of Motorsport UK, has threatened world governing body the FIA with legal action if it does not address his concerns about governance.

Richards’ move comes after he was one of a number of FIA members who were barred from a meeting of its world council last week after refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The 72-year-old said in a letter to members of Motorsport UK, external, a member of the FIA, that the FIA’s actions under president Mohammed Ben Sulayem are in breach of its own statutes and that its actions fall short of “gold-standard levels of transparency, accountability and integrity in sports governance”.

Richards, the chairman of motorsport engineering company Prodrive and a former Formula 1 team boss, added he intends to “remind the FIA of their responsibilities and hold them to account on behalf of the sport and their members worldwide”.

Richards’ letter references the number of controversies that have embroiled Ben Sulayem since he was elected in December 2021.

These have included his views on women, his approach to F1, changes to the statutes reducing accountability, the dismissal of a number of senior figures and rule changes regarding F1 drivers’ public behaviour.

Richards said there has been a “distinct failure” by Ben Sulayem to meet the promises he made when he ran for election.

These included being a hands-off president conducting himself in a non-executive manner and delegating the running of the FIA to a professional team, appointing and empowering a capable CEO, and full transparency of actions.

He said the situation at the FIA has “progressively worsened”, pointing to the firing or “resignation under an opaque cloud” of several senior FIA figures.

He added: “The scope of the audit and ethics committees has been severely limited and now lacks autonomy from the authority of the president, while the UK representative, who challenged certain matters, was summarily removed along with the chair of the audit committee”.

He said the “final straw” that led to his letter was “being asked to sign a new confidentiality agreement that I regarded as a ‘gagging order'”.

Richards said he had already signed a confidentiality agreement when he was appointed to the world motorsport council in 2021 and “remains committed to my confidentiality obligations under this existing agreement and Article 4, which remain in effect”.

He added: “However, the new confidentiality agreement went far further than this and, at a week’s notice, I was told that if I didn’t sign it, I would be barred from the next World Motorsport Council meeting.”

He said the key clauses he objected to were:

He added: “Our Motorsport UK lawyers, along with our French legal counsel, have challenged the FIA on their actions by setting out a clear set of questions that the FIA leadership needs to answer.

“It is very disappointing to report that we have still not received an answer to these or the fundamental question I raised: where in the FIA Statutes does it provide for an elected member to be barred from a meeting?”

He added: “We have informed the FIA that, unless they address the issues we’ve raised, we will be engaging in further legal action.”

Richards acknowledged that the media had gained access to some sensitive information in the past three years.

But he added: “No-one, least of all myself, would dispute the fact that certain matters must be treated as confidential and sensitive for external release.

“However, we should not allow that basic truth to be misused in order to create a blanket gagging order on volunteer representatives on the various crucial councils and committees. This is not how a member-owned and driven organisation should behave.”

The FIA reissued a response it gave to BBC Sport last week in the wake of Richards being excluded from the world council.

It said that non-disclosure agreements were “routine” in all organisations, that “unauthorised disclosure of confidential information undermines” its ability to pursue its objectives, and that the measures were “overwhelmingly supported by the super-majority of WMSC members”.