PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[CC1]

Which pretty well sums up most of the media (both) and red-shirt fans (just thick).

But seriously, that full post is spot on. Everton, despite working with the PL, refused to curtail their spending, breached an already generous limit, then advanced some incredibly specious arguments in an attempt at mitigation.

The penalty is excessive I think, and a transfer ban in reaction to overspending would have been more appropriate under the circumstances, but no one seems to have thought of that. It was a points deduction or a fine.

I'd say a maximum 6-point deduction and a 2 year transfer ban, plus an agreed plan to get their finances under control, would have been the appropriate penalty. What the panel have done is the equivalent of sending someone to prison for 6 months after getting 12 points on their driving licence. It's worrying that the panel so easily acceded to the PL's demand for that deduction. And we know what the PL were doing in requesting that.

Exactly. That’s why many on here are worried

 

[give it to gordon]

I’d rather win because we’re innocent- not because of threats to the government by our owners

So would I




But I couldn't careless, the other clubs, UEFA, pl havent played by the rules, just hacked cut n paste emails. So fuck em

 

[lonestay]

This talk of fraudulent accounting needs knocking on the head. City are audited by a reputable firm of auditors, not some little cowboy outfit.

The auditors know what damage could be done to their reputation if City were found guilty of certain charges. They are likely to have contributors to City’s defence and may have gone back to double check some of their prior work. I would also expect them to have resigned from their position if they had doubts about City’s honesty etc but they have remained in place.

But thats the whole point no fraudulent accounting has ever been done because we use highly reputable accountants and the fact the inland revenue are happy with our accounts to date , Its only the Prem and the media that think they are fraudulent as they cant see how we have become so big and so successful in a relatively short space of time so it must be dodgy right ?

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Exactly. That’s why many on here are worried

Quite. It's clearly a message. Whether aimed specifically at us or a general "Look how tough we are" aimed at the government it's hard to say though.

 

[lonestay]

I’d rather win because we’re innocent- not because of threats to the government by our owners

A wins a win

 

[OB1]

What about defamation ?

Not sure. That applies to individuals doesn’t it?

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

What about defamation ?

I'd prefer defenestration for some of the cunts pushing this and their lickspittles in the media.

 

[Chi-town blues]

Not sure. That applies to individuals doesn’t it?

Not sure either but the idea that anyone can go on a free hit without any consequence is pretty wild and unfair .

 

[Coatigan]

I see your point. It's definitely not a case of there being only 3 real charges and 112 we can safely ignore. That is definitely the sort of view that some have been propagating without genuinely understanding the background.

There are five groups of charges and the first of those relates to inaccurate accounts due to sponsorships. Another to payments to players and managers.

We're not totally clear on the sponsorships one but there's no mileage in attacking the Etihad one; we'd knock that right out of the park easily enough. There's a good chance it's the Etisalat one in the early years of the current ownership, and which predates both UEFA and the PL's own FFP rules.

Those are the three but there are, as you say, two others. But they relate to both the PL and UEFA FFP rules, which rely on the submission of accounts. If the charges related to the three substantive issues charges are dismissed by the panel, then those other two automatically have to be dismissed as they're solely a consequence of the other three.

And of course there is the non-cooperation charge, which is the one most likely to stick but has no impact on the accounting ones.

That's really it, your first paragraph sums it up. It might be more a language than a logic issue, in a lot of cases.

Note it was not your posts I was really arguing, but the subsequent takeaways of it. Albeit with a poster that most likely gets it too, and did at least qualify it to an extent. There have been many others though, and you can bet on the back of that one there will be a few more.

The rest of that, yeah sure, I get and see all that.

 

[Dribble]

I've just listened to the podcast featuring @Prestwich_Blue saying our charges come down to 4 breaches, & multiples of those to get to the PL's 115 charges.

1. Mancini's Consultancy contract with Al Jazira.

Mancini was paid £1.45m plus bonuses by City, but had a second £1.75m Consultancy contract with Al Jazira Sports & Cultural Club which was owned by ADUG, the parent company of Manchester City.

The Der Spiegel claim is ADUG paid Al Jazira the money which was paid to Mancini as a Consultancy fee to help City get around FFP.

2. Image Rights payments through Fordham Image Rights

In 2013 City sold our players' Image Rights to Fordham Sports Image Rights for £24.5m & they paid our players their image rights.

UEFA & Der Spiegel claim we did this to artificially inflate our income to pass FFP in 2013, which City vehemently denied, but this formed part of the breach for which we were sanctioned that year.

After reaching an agreement with UEFA in 2015, City wound up this arrangement with Fordham & by 2018 we'd brought the players' Image Rights back into club ownership & control.

3. Etisalat Sponsorship

UEFA & Der Spiegel claim that City took two payments of £15m (£30m total) in 2012 & 2013 from Abu Dhabi based Financial Broker Jaber Mohamed, disguising it as sponsorship money from Abu Dhabi based telecommunications company Etisilat.

To my recollection, this was bridge funding from from Jaber Mohamed, because the Etisilat sponsorship payment wasn't due to City until 2015. On the due date, Jaber Mohamed was reimbursed by Etisilat.

4. Non Cooperation

After submitting our interim accounts in March 2013 which UEFA passed, we submitted our certified accounts 4 weeks later, only to learn UEFA had shifted the monitoring period back by 12 months without our knowledge to include the wages of Carlos Tevez.

This meant from being £3m inside FFP, we found ourselves £3m outside the limit & were hammered with a £50m fine, a £50m per season transfer limit for 3 seasons, a CL squad reduction from 24 to 20 players for 3 seasons, & of that 20-man squad, 4 had to be club trained & 4 Association trained.

Conclusion:

UEFA/G14 brought in FFP to stop City ever challenging the hegemony of the European Elite teams.

As they made moves to stop us, we made legal counter-moves to circumnavigate FFP restrictions on our growth.

Legal is the operative word here. What City have done hasn't broken any UK, European or Abu Dhabi laws, BUT UEFA believe they've broken their FFP rules.

The question of right or wrong comes down to whether UEFA's rules usurp the sovereign laws of the UK, Europe & Abu Dhabi. They don't.

This comes to the heart of why City are in favour of an Independent Football Regulator (IFR) with CAS finding in our favour, & UEFA/G14 & the five founding members of the Premier League being Everton, Spuds, Liverpool, Arsenal & ManUre aren't in favour of outside regulation.

UEFA/G14 & those five PL teams are quite happy with English & European football being governed in their own self interests. City realised their FFP rules would make it virtually impossible for any newly minted outsiders to ever challenge them domestically or in European competition, so did what we legally could to progress to where we are today.

Hopefully I've got all this right, as I think it vitally important we sort the wheat from the chaff in defence of the club we love. )(

 

[cheekybids]

I’d rather win because we’re innocent- not because of threats to the government by our owners

So would I but just in case I have no problem with option 2.

 

[BlueAnorak]

Hard to make something stick if you don’t have the evidence and the Commission behaves professionally.

Mud will stick forever with a lot of the public because they want to believe City are guilty of cheating but that is different.

If the Commission arrives at conclusions that would not be supported in a court of law, then City will do everything they can to end up in a court of law.

This is basically the reason why the red tops have pushed the PL into doing this.
Mud will stick.
Fortunately for the PL the appointed commission are being extremely professional and not leaking a thing (unlike UEFA). As such the PL can say their were questions to answer - clearly at first glance there are.
How the comissions response will be presented to the press will be key to City's response.
It will have to be a charge by charge response.

 

[TinFoilHat]

I hope our lawyers are listening to Talkshite.

Perry Groves in his unofficial role of Arsenal PR has claimed our case is ongoing because we're not cooperating with the investigation.

 

[Dribble]

I'm sure they only included the answers that suited their agenda. I have always found Stefan to be fair and considered. From the start he has highlighted how serious these charges are (which is true) whilst stressing that the burden of proof of guilt in this case is going to be considerable. You can ask him on here if he is 'surrender monkey' though.

I've accepted the Sun interview was probably edited, so without knowing Stefan's view previously, I took the interview as read.

My apologies for any offence caused. )(

 

[CC1]

I hope our lawyers are listening to Talkshite.

Perry Groves in his unofficial role of Arsenal PR has claimed our case is ongoing because we're not cooperating with the investigation.

Things like this should definitely be tackled by the club. Trouble with media is that it “employs” people related to football - such as ex players - who frankly, are uneducated & it shows. I’m not saying they are thick but they don’t have the knowledge, background, education or experience to offer comments. Yet they are put into these situations that give them an uninformed voice

 

[Dribble]

Do we know the Premier League haven’t provided City with any evidence or is this just an assumption? There seems a widespread assumption that it is City dragging things out

Pep said in an interview he would not be leaving City even if we were found guilty & that he & the club wanted the PL to get on with the hearing so we could clear our name.

The impression I get is it's the PL who're still investigating us after issuing charges. If not, they'd have given us a date to respond to them based on the evidence provided, pending a hearing date.

 

[kaz7]

See it is no calmer in here , complete waste of energy getting wound up, we will find out and react to when its time

 

[OB1]

But thats the whole point no fraudulent accounting has ever been done because we use highly reputable accountants and the fact the inland revenue are happy with our accounts to date , Its only the Prem and the media that think they are fraudulent as they cant see how we have become so big and so successful in a relatively short space of time so it must be dodgy right ?

BDO are City’s auditors; not their accountants.

City have their own in-house Finance function, which over the year as will have had a number of qualified accountants working there and who will be highly professional people who would not go anywhere near accounting fraudulently or falsely. It is almost inconceivable that not one of those would have blown the whistle if something illegal had taken place.

BDO do not check every transactions and auditors certainly do miss things but they will have checked in detail all major sponsorship deals / transactions.

HMRC’s interest in City will largely be focused on their VAT return because they won’t have expected to get any corporation tax out of City due to accumulated losses from the past. They would also be far more concerNed with understatement of profit than overstatement: at the end of the day, they just want to collect tax so the more income we disclose from Etihad etc, the better…

If Mansour has been funding sponsorships, that would happen outside of the country in the books of companies that the Premier League has no access to or right of access to. How the fuck are they going to prove that happened?

 

[Chi-town blues]

BDO are City’s auditors; not their accountants.

City have their own in-house Finance function, which over the year as will have had a number of qualified accountants working there and who will be highly professional people who would not go anywhere near accounting fraudulently or falsely. It is almost inconceivable that not one of those would have blown the whistle if something illegal had taken place.

BDO do not check every transactions and auditors certainly do miss things but they will have checked in detail all major sponsorship deals / transactions.

HMRC’s interest in City will largely be focused on their VAT return because they won’t have expected to get any corporation tax out of City due to accumulated losses from the past. They would also be far more concerNed with understatement of profit than overstatement: at the end of the day, they just want to collect tax so the more income we disclose from Etihad etc, the better…

If Mansour has been funding sponsorships, that would happen outside of the country in the books of companies that the Premier League has no access to or right of access to. How the fuck are they going to prove that happened?

Exactly! this whole shit show must’ve started when bunch of cunts got drunk and thought they got city by balls . Next morning hangover and to comprehend the whole situation must’ve been like taking a loads in their mouth to swallow .

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Do you have inside knowledge that there is no “hard evidence”? Nobody on here has much idea what the evidence against us is, we know the charges but the evidence is only disclosed to City…two completely different things.

I have no inside knowledge and as much hard evidence as the cunts condemning us in the media, namely fuck all.

My strong suspicion that there is no such evidence is based on the absence of any particulars whatsoever in the public domain when the PL’s default mode is to leak like a fucking sieve, and the fact that the useless cunts couldn’t even get the charges right in the first instance.

If they had the body of evidence you suspect they might then I think it’s virtually impossible that there wouldn’t be more details in the public domain, and moreover that they would have framed the charges around that evidence in a considered and properly particularised fashion.

I believe the absence of any particulars makes my supposition far more likely than yours. If the PL had this evidence it’s inconceivable we wouldn’t have heard more about it. Perfectly stands to reason.