CAS judgement: UEFA ban overturned, City exonerated (report out p603)

[Centurions]

I doubt he messed with the emails. I’ve already asked Christoph on twitter how that night of happened

Christoph doesn't appear to be answering Twitter questions, perhaps he's speaking to his colleagues and bosses trying to explain why they falsified a story (again).

 

[Delboy352]

Daily fail changed their headline

They may have changed their headline, but the online version is conflicted!!

 

[remember arthur mann]

Conn's piece is disgusting and he's burned any bridges he may have had, both with City and with me. I'm going to go to town on him as well tomorrow. He's clearly being told what to write, whereas I always thought he had integrity, even if I didn't agree with him.

Go for it PB, live up to your name !

 

[Blueprint Blue]

So we didn't get banned.
We didn't kill anyone.
We got justice.innocent till proven guilty
Are you reading this you scouse vermin..

I suggest you go to the 'man city' thread on Rawk to see how they feel. You won't be surprised.

 

[jaiguruKun]

Submitted my BBC complaint (first time)

I’ve had enough to be honest. I’ve never complained to any online platform before but the reputation of my club has been through the mud for months and now it has been given the legal vindication that it has been stating since the start. Only you wouldn’t know that was the story from your article.

MCFC has stated throughout, that it did not break any financial rules and that all emails being reported and discussed were hacked and being taken out of context.

Of course MCFC were right on all 3 cases. Cas has found there to be no evidence of any wrongdoing; the emails were hacked and they were being taken out of context (a number of them had elements deleted before publishing and one was the amalgamation of 2 different emails).

Call it what you like but essentially the world has assumed guilt on the part of MCFC based on completely false and fake information.

Only this isn’t the angle your article decided to run with. Despite the unbiased requirement of the BBC, it appears you remain undetatched from the partisan nature of football (no doubt a large number of your football writers are football fans, do they declare their team as part of their job? Who is the journalist that wrote this piece a fan of out of interest...) and the necessity to pander to the key fan bases of Liverpool and Manchester United (amongst others) who did not wish MCFC to be found not guilty.

So instead of showing MCFC to be cleared of all financial violations of FFP (i.e. the whole basis of the story), your article focussed on the smaller bit that was proved (i.e. that MCFC did not cooperate with UEFAs investigation).

When the original punishment was brought (for clear breaches of FFP and failure to cooperate) the main story was on clear breaches of FFP. Now they have been exonerated of that, the storyline should have focussed on the same subject. Not twisted as you have to move to the non-story of uncooperation.

I expect better and hope for fairer reporting on this matter.

Not saying the BBC article is fair (I haven't read it) however it's been known for weeks that City were found not to have committed the more serious allegations but the nature of the lack of co-operation was only made known when the full judgement was released yesterday.

 

[SilverFox2]

He looks like the kind of guy who needs help satisfying his wife tbh.


I’m still gobsmacked CAS fined us for our lack of cooperation, even in the initial stages they could see we had grounds , why they haven’t taken into account the complete loss of trust in UEFA is beyond me .

Its in UEFA rules which CAS were using to see if we complied with them.
Because we did not trust the whole process we decided to not give them any more evidence that in itself would likely be ignored or used against us. We chose to break that rule and the fine ensues.
Our reasons were irrelevant as far as CAS were concerned but they did say if we had shown that evidence we may have prevented the need for CAS to be involved.
We preferred to prove our innocence initially with CAS. As PB said earlier we may choose to get the fine eliminated legally.

 

[CrownPointBlue]

Same thoughts too, should be an all out effort to put these bastards in the bottom block !

An escort for him across the car park to the press entrance ?

 

[kippax4ever]

I suggest you go to the 'man city' thread on Rawk to see how they feel. You won't be surprised.

Nah don't want my laptop hacked mate.

 

[lancs blue]

Who stitched the two emails together ?
Why ?
isn't that against the law ?
Are we going after said person or persons ?

Either Rui Pinto, in which case the law is already dealing with him, or someone at Der Spiegel who thought it made the story look better. I suppose we could pursue DS through the German courts but it's questionable whether it's worth the hassle tbh, it could drag on.

 

[Ardwick Green Blue]

The 2 points of failed cooperation;

1. UEFA demanding a full cross examination / interrogation of 7 or 8 members of MCFC staff at a private hearing in 2019 - only Soriano attended, it’s obvious why City would not consent to this. Why would we sacrifice our staff to UEFA’s/g14’s wolves? CAS said if we did present these witnesses, as we did for CAS, UEFA may have found us not guilty (pro tip, they wouldn’t have, they just would have been able to warp our evidence in to their prosecution).

2. the Email chains and who is Mohamed? We provided this all voluntarily to CAS. This info exonerated us.

The reason we didn’t cooperate is clear, as we stated this to UEFA and CAS, we wouldn’t comment to UEFA regarding illegally stolen emails, and we quoted the Portuguese judge reviewing Rui Pinto’s case who said his emails should not be used for prosecution in any setting world wide. We thought the entire investigation was compromised (we were right) and that we’d be found guilty no matter what by UEFA.

All probably true but it still doesn't answer my question as to what advantage the club has gained.

I'm not seeing one.

 

[Centurions]

I know my eyesight is failing but I am sure I read somewhere in the verdict that CAS mentions the fact that one of emails used as evidence was actually two emails doctored and made to look as one. Nick Harris suggests that isn’t the case and all emails were authentic. Am I going mad or is he, as I presume, being economical with the truth?

Also due to them doctoring the emails by removing the dates, it couldn't be seen that at least 1 of the emails was from before FFP was introduced.

You could ask him why they only published 6 edited emails out of 5.5 million hacked documents (from City alone, page 38, section 88). That alone should have alerted UEFA that proceeding on those grounds alone would have made them look stupid. Because the emails turned out to be more or less authentic, (allowing for the editing and redactions) UEFA then decided that the amounts mentioned matched our accounts therefore it must be true that we were 'cooking the books'.

 

[Dirty Harry]

Its in UEFA rules which CAS were using to see if we complied with them.
Because we did not trust the whole process we decided to not give them any more evidence that in itself would likely be ignored or used against us. We chose to break that rule and the fine ensues.
Our reasons were irrelevant as far as CAS were concerned but they did say if we had shown that evidence we may have prevented the need for CAS to be involved.
We preferred to prove our innocence initially with CAS. As PB said earlier we may choose to get the fine eliminated legally.

I know exactly what happened and why mate, I'm just surprised, given the mitigating circumstances, that they still chose to fine us, I sincerely hope what PB has said proves to be correct.

 

[Woody135]

All probably true but it still doesn't answer my question as to what advantage the club has gained.

I'm not seeing one.

I think City were probably saying this is a joke, we’ve told you they’re hacked and they’re out of context. There is no case. Hoping that it would end there.

UEFA were sufficiently pressured to pursue even without evidence, calling us out to produce said evidence at Cas or if we were bluffing they would be vindicated.

Both sides “called” essentially to bets and bluffs and when the cards were shown we had the full house and they had a pair of 2s.

 

[SilverFox2]

The truth is - he knows the score, irrespective of his bullshit. We know he knows and it's hurting him.

All have decision to make.
Do they continue with the vitriol that has kept them newsworthy risking ridicule or find another angle to entice anti city opinion.
I'm they are aware that now a proper court has given a verdict they must choose their words carefully.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

In view of the lack of evidence and the tampering with the emails I find it hard to understand how uefa were not held liable for all legal costs as it essentially a malicious / false accusation by them, and also where the fuck the 10m fine is justified. Despite 'winning' we have been pretty severly punished and der spiegel / uefa get off.

 

[bluesoup]

In view of the lack of evidence and the tampering with the emails I find it hard to understand how uefa were not held liable for all legal costs as it essentially a malicious / false accusation by them, and also where the fuck the 10m fine is justified. Despite 'winning' we have been pretty severly punished and der spiegel / uefa get off.

Actually if you look at it this way, they pay half of our costs for our gazillion lawyers and I am sure they were not cheap. They only had six back street lawyers to feed.

 

[BlueAnorak]

I wish I could agree with you but after reading it all carefully I cannot. There is no implication at all. They would not examine them because it was time barred and this will give the opportunity for those that wish to say that we got off on a technicality. I suspect City could easily have applied all the same arguments and got in the relevant high ups from Etisalat but as they were not required to, they did not.

Well that would have been finding City guilty for the same offence twice as Etisalat was dealt with in the 2014 judgement!

 

[Woody135]

Also due to them doctoring the emails by removing the dates, it couldn't be seen that at least 1 of the emails was from before FFP was introduced.

You could ask him why they only published 6 edited emails out of 5.5 million hacked documents (from City alone, page 38, section 88). That alone should have alerted UEFA that proceeding on those grounds alone would have made them look stupid. Because the emails turned out to be more or less authentic, (allowing for the editing and redactions) UEFA then decided that the amounts mentioned matched our accounts therefore it must be true that we were 'cooking the books'.

As if they searched through 5.5 million emails and only found 6 emails worth publishing (and even those 6 were doctored). We’re almost completely squeaky clean

 

[Rochdale Blue]

Either Rui Pinto, in which case the law is already dealing with him, or someone at Der Spiegel who thought it made the story look better. I suppose we could pursue DS through the German courts but it's questionable whether it's worth the hassle tbh, it could drag on.

I assume it would certainly drag on, but when you hear media organisations and so-called journalists banging on about 'freedom of the press,' then they should suffer the consequences of abusing that freedom. It's not just City suffering at the hand of these liars and twisters of the truth.

 

[jaiguruKun]

All probably true but it still doesn't answer my question as to what advantage the club has gained.

I'm not seeing one.

The club saw no advantage in disclosing the e-mails to UEFA and were rightly concerned about further leaks.

Some sections of the e-mails have been redacted by UEFA to protect commercial confidentiality. Would you trust UEFA to do the same when slipping them across to the likes of Tariq and Conn?

We simply didn't trust the impartiality and integrity of the investigators particularly in view of the leaks. We rightly saw it as an adversarial process and that we would eventually have to go to CAS. Under such circumstances I don't blame the club for not volunteering witnesses and erring on the side of caution when it came to disclosure of the e-mails.