Swindon Town has not paid any money to “shady characters”, the club’s owner has insisted.

Clem Morfuni made the comments in an interview with the Adver on Wednesday, after the release of the club’s Advisory Board minutes from December revealed he had to inject upwards of £1.1 million into the club to keep it afloat.

A now-deleted post on X, formerly known as Twitter, from TrustSTFC shortly after its release caused alarm among fans.

The supporters trust said that the payments were needed because of “legal costs from previous ownership issues [which] keep coming out of the woodwork”, and that the costs related to historical agreements made by the previous regime where there were not necessarily contracts or paperwork.

The post went on: “Some of the people involved are not the sort of people you can just ask to stop using facilities/services hence the legal route to safeguard the club and clean this up.”

In an interview with the Adver on Wednesday, Mr Morfuni was asked about these payments.

He said: "£850,000 was there to pay the suppliers, the wages, and HMRC, we've had the books checked by the supporter's trust, so, no, there's no shady characters that we've actually paid anything out.

"We've had legal issues since I've taken over in the last two and a half years, there have been a few legal issues, and we've still got three or four still pending."

TrustSTFC soon deleted the post, and later clarified: “We published a message last night relating to a legal matter listed in the latest Advisory Board minutes, and as this is an ongoing case we realise we should not have discussed this, hence the deletion.

“The comment was not intended to suggest any threat to any individual associated with the club or Trust.

"We have a commitment to a renewed approach in providing more clarity and insight to members and supporters, however, we recognise that we need to choose our words more carefully and that causal conversations may not be appropriate in all situations."

Also in the interview, Mr Morfuni revealed that he expected progress to be made on the County Ground development by the end of the month.

“It is on track, you don’t click your fingers and things are done, it takes time to get things rolling but I am pushing quite hard on it because I want it done as much as all of the supporters.”