The English Premier League yesterday confirmed that an independent Commission found Manchester City guilty of all charges relating to serious breaches of its financial rules over a nine-season period, and of the majority of charges over failing to co-operate with its investigation.
The League said the Commission found that between 2009/10 and 2017/18, City arranged ‘sham’ contracts with commercial partners, filed misstated accounts, concealed the true state of its finances from auditors and regulators, and significantly breached both Premier League and UEFA spending limits. Three of four alleged breaches of the duty of co-operation and utmost good faith were upheld.
According to the Commission, City’s sponsors paid only part of the agreed fees, with the balance funded by the club’s owner, Abu Dhabi United Group Investment and Development Ltd (ADUG). Further ADUG-funded arrangements let City record lower operating expenses than it incurred, including a ‘sham’ circular deal with Fordham, an entity that bought the players’ image rights.
The Commission found the schemes were meant to inflate revenues and reduce costs by more than £900 million so City would appear to comply with the rules. It concluded that ‘by its conduct the club clearly intended to circumvent the PL Rules’ and that the club ‘made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate’ the League’s four-year investigation.
Premier League Chief Executive Richard Masters said the decision ‘details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade’ and ‘vindicates’ the League’s decision to pursue the case.
‘This disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history,’ Masters said. ‘Now we have the Commission’s decision, we are committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process.’
The sanction will be decided at a separate hearing before the Commission, which will remain private until publication is permitted. City have until Friday, 2 October to appeal.
La Liga president Javier Tebas said City should face the ‘most severe sanction’ available. Speaking at a football performance and health summit in London, he said breaking the rules ‘for more than 10 years, however minor the breaches may have been, is very serious’.
‘There has to be a severe punishment for breaking the rules, not just to set an example, but because the rules were broken,’ Tebas said.
Former Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino, now United States coach, said City’s success amounted to ‘a period of deception’.
‘We went through something where sporting fairness didn’t exist,’ Pochettino said. ‘How do you repair everything that was damaged because of that?’ He said he was unsure what fitting sanction could follow: ‘An economic punishment? Docking points? It’s really hard.’
City have strenuously denied the charges, and chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak has said he remains confident the club will be vindicated.