If you're saying that the allegations specifically over inflating sponsorship which are specifically referenced in the PL charge sheet differ substantially from those put forward by UEFA as justification for banning MCFC and fining the club £30 million, then that would impact on a analysis of the position. If you're not saying this, on the other hand, then I invite you to read the
CAS Award in City's case against UEFA because the Award is arguably the best source out there in terms of explaining the charges in question.
After all, we're accused by the PL of breaching the duty contained in its rules to provide financial information that gives a true and fair reflection of the club's financial position "with respect to its revenue (including sponsorship revenue), its related parties and its operating costs". This is exactly the issue that dominated the CAS proceedings, and unless we're presented with evidence to the contrary, it seems to me perfectly reasonable to assume that the nature of the accusations from the PL is materially the same as that of the charges UEFA found proven against us.
In particular, then, I invite you to consider the text between pages 8 and 12 of the CAS Award, the Panel summarises the nature of the UEFA decision we were appealing in the proceedings at hand. In doing so, the panel quotes directly from the Decision of UEFA's Adjudicatory Chamber, so we have the findings straight from the horse's mouth as follows:
So there you have it in black and white. UEFA said that City deliberately and intentionally concealed the source of sponsorship income to circumvent the FFP regulations. In doing so, the club produced accounts that "were not complete and correct".
The offence of false accounting under
section 17 of the Theft Act 1968 is a fraud-based offence. By virtue of section 17(1)(b), a person "shall, on conviction on indictment, be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years" if that person "
dishonestly, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another" when he "
in furnishing information for any purpose produces or makes use of any account, or any such record or document as aforesaid, which to his knowledge is or may be misleading, false or deceptive in a material particular".
That, in effect, is exactly what UEFA accused us of doing. The CAS rejected it, but the allegation was that the employees and officers of MCFC with whom they were dealing in the context of our FFP issues had committed conduct that happens to fall squarely within the above definition for the following reason.
If the CAS had found MCFC guilty, the relevant officers of MCFC;
- would have had to have acted dishonestly (they're sophisticated businesspeople who fully understood UEFA's rules and, according to UEFA, knew what they were doing);
- would certainly have been acting with a view to gain ... for another (the other being the club, and such gain taking the form of allowing the club to spend £200 million that otherwise wouldn't have counted as income for FFP purposes, as referred to in para 206 of the CAS Award); and
- would have supplied various sets of accounts and other documents that were "misleading, false or deceptive" because they'd have provided documents including but not limited to our annual accounts that duped UEFA into thinking we had an extra £50 million available to us annually while still meeting the requirements of FFP.
How else are UEFA's accusations to be interpreted if not as allegations of conduct that, if committed, constitutes a serious criminal offence. There are all sorts of reasons why a prosecution might not have ensued even with a guilty verdict from the CAS, but make no mistake, what UEFA claimed we'd done constituted conduct that was, in effect, fraudulent.
