FOOTBALL – MANCHESTER City used “sham” commercial contracts as part of schemes to inflate revenue and understate costs by more than £900 million over nearly a decade, the Premier League said yesterday after an independent commission ruled the club guilty of serious breaches of financial rules.
The commission found City guilty of all charges relating to breaches of the league’s financial rules over nine seasons, between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 campaigns, as well as three of four charges concerning their failure to co-operate with the investigation.
The club, which denies wrongdoing, said in a statement it would appeal “on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”.
No sanction has yet been imposed, leaving unresolved the potential consequences for a club that has dominated English football over the past decade.
A significant punishment could affect past and future title races, European qualification and the distribution of tens of millions of pounds in prize money. The case has also raised wider questions about financial governance, competitive integrity and the Premier League’s ability to hold its most powerful clubs to account.
An independent commission found that City arranged “sham” contracts that misrepresented the true agreements with several commercial partners and relied on similar agreements with others to inflate their revenue and reduce costs artificially, the league said.
It found that several sponsors were required to pay only part of the fees recorded in the relevant agreements, with the balance supplied by the club’s owner Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG).
The commission also identified arrangements funded by ADUG that allowed City to record lower operating expenses.
The schemes inflated City’s revenue and reduced their costs, creating the appearance that the club complied with financial regulations, the league said.
British media reported that City Chief Executive Ferran Soriano addressed staff in a video in which he rejected the allegations.
“The whole Premier League case against us is based on a single false accusation, that the owners’ personal money was somehow and secretly put into the club via some sponsors from Abu Dhabi,” Soriano was quoted as saying. “This is just not true. Irrefutable evidence has been provided to the Premier League commission that shows it could not happen and that it did not happen.”
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