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An independent commission found Manchester City guilty of all but one Premier League charge, including £900m in sham sponsorship deals. The club denies wrongdoing and plans to appeal.
Manchester City have been found guilty of all but one of the charges brought against them by the Premier League after the publication of the independent commission's findings.
The commission found that City cheated deliberately, then tried to cover it up with a campaign of calculated misinformation. The verdict concerns £900m of sham contracts. The chief executive, Ferran Soriano, released a video vowing that the club would appeal and pursue all other legal avenues to prove its innocence. It has until Friday to appeal.
City CEO Soriano Vows To Appeal Commission Verdict
City issued a statement insisting that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe. Soriano dismissed the Premier League's charges as a conspiracy theory. He pointedly referred to the independent commission as a Premier League Commission. He claimed the charges were based on a single false accusation of diverting funds from the owner to the club under the guise of sponsorship payments.
This, he said, could not happen and did not happen. The commission's view is very different. The verdict found that City overstated income by around £855m and understated outgoings by around £66m. This was not a cock-up but a calculated attempt to circumvent the rules.
Any sanction will be addressed separately in a further hearing. It is impossible to read the verdict without thinking that the punishment will have to be extremely severe. Everton were docked a total of eight points over two accounting windows for an inadvertent breach of profitability and sustainability rules amounting to around £20m, having cooperated with the investigation. The verdict makes for astonishing reading.
Reputation Of Abu Dhabi United Group Lies In Tatters
The reputation and integrity of the Abu Dhabi United Group, the 81% majority owner of City, lies in tatters, shredded in careful, measured legal prose. The appendices, as and when they are made public, might make it even worse. Even if some technicality is found that mitigates the punishment, their standing cannot surely recover. The findings show this is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on English football.
This is not breaching the maximum wage and being caught when most clubs were doing similar, which lay at the heart of the three previous huge top-division financial scandals: Manchester City in 1906, Leeds City in 1919 and Sunderland in 1957. This was deception on a massive scale. Sponsorship deals are described as shams to obscure investment and overstated by £830m over the nine years in question as part of a plan to disguise shareholder funding as commercial partner revenue.
The Fordham Agreement, an arrangement by which an entity bought player image rights, was little more than a front. Attempts to claim that the Premier League had misunderstood how the sponsorship deals worked were an explanation that the club concocted well after the event in an attempt to conceal and obscure the realities of the disguised funding scheme. The level of mendacity identified is extraordinary.
Club Made Concerted Efforts To Frustrate Investigation
In regards to the sham sponsorship arrangements there was intentional conduct to disguise the true nature of certain revenues and liabilities, to give the appearance of minimising the club's financial dependence on ADUG and give a misleading impression in the club's financial statements that the club's financial position was better than it in fact was. Having been charged, City made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the Premier League investigation.
The panel found evidence given by a number of important factual witnesses on behalf of the club was false in key respects. Certain factual witnesses had given evidence they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest. On occasions, the panel concluded it should not accept the opinion of an expert. The precise reasons are set out in an appendix but, in context, an inference can be drawn.
The one charge on which City were not found guilty was of breaching duties of cooperation with the Premier League in relation to one tranche of accusations. That is not the get-out many City fans have hoped for since Friday. The verdict is damning. The Premier League is made up of its 20 constituent clubs.
Strong Argument Exists For Club Expulsion From League
City have cheated each of the other 19. They have lied consistently and deliberately. The continued denials only enhance the sense that this is a club that has no respect for the regulations. There must now be a very good argument for expulsion.
How can City, at least under the current ownership, ever be trusted again? How can they go on playing even this season, pretending all is well, awaiting appeal and sanction, when they have been found guilty of charges of such magnitude?
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