PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[WRicko]

The emails don’t stand up unless they can produce a transaction to confirm payments were funded via Mansour and directed through related parties sponsorship deals. They wont have that and the sponsors can produce transactions that show they paid the correct amounts of money. Irrefutable evidence trumping opinion.

I agree So I do not know why you are mentioning this to me. I am not making a judgement on guilt or innocence or amount or lack of evidence I am just stating what we are accused of and how it has came about

 

[Saddleworth2]

Marginally yes, although that’s different issues.

Murdoch has dripped poison into the nations ear for decades. He has damaged us as much as any politician. It’s difficult to conceive how ownership of the Telegraph by one of the emirates could be worse than that. Only my opinion mind.

 

[Sky Blue]

No way is he a blue

A snake in the grass.

 

[Iassel]

And if we were found "guilty" on all charges do you think the club would sit back and accept it, given that they very much believe they've done nothing wrong? Getting rid of people just wouldn't be on any "to do list" as that would imply guilt. We would double down and fight tooth and nail.

There are very few options to fight though unless they could prove the tribunal had erred spectacularly in any findings of ‘guilt’. The club already tried to get the case killed at commercial court who rejected that and said the PL had jurisdiction and acted ‘fairly’. There wouldnt be future commercial court appeals, there wouldn’t be government intervention etc etc.

Of course it’s all semantics as the PL would need to present something so explosive to land all of the charges that it’s extremely unlikely to ever get to that stage, as I’ve said for ages now, my guess has long been ‘guilty’ of non compliance, a chunky fine and Pep and the board drinking Manchester dry.

 

[abu13]

Lets face it, if the PL had some smoking gun or whistle blower the club would be fully aware of the situation by now. And if we were bang to rights there would be things happening now that would indicate a problem. For example we may look to offload players to secure market value transfer fees, key people at the club would be moving on to new roles outside of the club.

What we wouldn't be doing is spending money on redeveloping the stadium, that on its own makes me feel very confident about the future.

 

[feedmpenzaandhewillscore]

I agree So I do not know why you are mentioning this to me. I am not making a judgement on guilt or innocence or amount or lack of evidence I am just stating what we are accused of and how it has came about

Apologies, I agree on what you said just reinforcing it for the prying eyes on this forum who want to see City hung drawn and quartered. They need to understand how flakey this case is and curb their enthusiasm.

 

[inbetween]

We don’t know the precise details of the charges but they use terms akin to false accounting such as in accurate etc. ok this might only mean in accurate in relation to FFP but I don’t believe it is and if it where that would likely only be the case of something that was contested like with Everton certain costs etc this would have be n discovered and argued over at the time like Everton

We assume these charges relate to hacked emails the hacked emails refer to what the media call inflated sponsorship they are in fact actually under the table payments from sheik and also off the books payments to players managers and agents. I think any of this would constitute cooking the books fraud etc

Our response will always be the same which is that we've complied with all legal process and as a result we haven't done anything wrong. The Premier League can't just create rules on what is good and bad on non-sporting issues because who are they to say otherwise? The rules can actually be deemed as damaging because punishments can harm clubs financially and this is where it will always be defeated in court, especially if it isn't done fairly and independently.

Everton were punished because they broke the rules but it's easy to prove that the punishment is ridiculous and actually stupid. Everton exceeded FFP by £20m and because of league position payouts their 10pt deduction could be worth far more than that, that's how stupid it is. Instead the Premier League is punishing them and making the problem even worse, it hardly saves clubs from going bust does it?

City can easily argue anything like this on the grounds of fairness. I know it's different but look at Real Madrid and Barcelona who are still going for a Super League and they haven't been punished. They haven't been punished because the Spanish courts have ruled that UEFA isn't allowed to punish them and so UEFA has no choice but to comply.

The emails etc aren't admissible in court so you can bet that they aren't admissible in an investigation conducted by a non-legal entity like the Premier League. The Premier League is actually just a company, it has no business really investigating other companies and handing out punishments for anything.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

False accounting would be a problem yes but I don't think that is an accusation. There is a difference between creative accounting and false accounting. False accounting would be fraud, IE, you have lied about a transaction. I don't think that this is the case because the legal authorities such as the Serious Fraud Office or HMRC would be involved. The taxman would certainly be dropping the hammer on us.

The Premier League again is in no position to judge our accounts, as far as they're concerned our accounts are fully legal and audited because city are legally obligated under UK law to ensure that happens. The Premier League however has its own rules on accounting reporting and that's where the problem lies. Structuring deals to get around those rules isn't false or illegal accounting, it's creative accounting. Failure to comply and disclose these deals according to those rules is what we're accused of.

On creative accounting alone you could easily argue these same accusations against any club in the Premier League. Why do you think that the parent business who owns United is registered in the Cayman Islands? Why is the parent of Liverpool registered in Delaware USA? The reason for this is to avoid tax and keep the books out of UK scrutiny which is just another form of creative accounting.

I haven't read into all of the supposed breaches but it seems that they often come down to an extremely complicated web of transactions which probably aren't seen in the accounts. This doesn't mean that they're illegal, it may just mean that clearly certain transactions have been structured in such a way to avoid the rules let's say.

This is where I diverge slightly from Stefan's somewhat apocalyptic view that we're effectively being accused of fraudulent accounting and therefore expulsion from the PL and criminal charges are a potential outcome. I'm not sure that follows necessarily but I'm not an expert so he may well be correct. He definitely knows there's a fine line.

Accounting can often be a matter of interpretation as to how you show something and there can sometimes be a fine line between interpretation and deception. Accountancy at its heart requires being prudent about assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses. Don't undervalue expenses/liabilities and don't overvalue revenue/assets.

Valuation of stock is a classic example. The higher you value your stock in hand, the higher your reported profit. Companies are supposed to value stock at the lower of cost or net realisable value. So if you buy something for £100 and plan to sell it for £200, the stock value of that item should be £100. But if you'd had that item for sale for a while, and it had been superseded by a newer version, you might just want to get rid of it for £75, which should be its NRV and the value shown in the accounts. However you might leave it at £100. That's not necessarily 'true and fair' but it's not fraudulent either. It's an opinion. I used to do the audit of a brickworks in Little Lever and there were hundreds of thousands of bricks in stock that had to be valued. You couldn't count them and you certainly couldn't look at each one and estimate its NRV. And they were made there, not bought in so you made a best guess as to the total value of the stock. It may have been overvalued but that was the best we could do, as long as we could justify it.

At Wirecard my former KPMG colleague, Markus Braun, put $1.9bn of cash on the balance sheet that they didn't have. My former bosses at Independent Insurance deliberately withheld large claims from the system, thereby reporting profits that were actually significant losses. The software company Autonomy, who used to sponsor Spurs, are alleged to have claimed revenues on potential contracts they hadn't actually signed (among other things) leading HP to pay an inflated price when they they bought them.

So what could we have done? Have we inflated the value of sponsorships? No, at least according to UEFA/CAS. Was the Mancini contract an attempt to hide expenses? Unlikely but even if it was, it was a pin prick given the losses we were reporting. Did we attempt to deceive anyone over the players' image rights payments? No, as there was a clear trail to Fordham.

And who are we alleged to have committed fraud against? We were privately owned by Sheikh Mansour for the whole period under charges. Silverlake bought in in 2019, whereas the charges only cover the period to 2018. There's our auditors and other advisers potentially but have they (or anyone else) lost anything if we did? No. So who's the victim (don't say it!) here?

At worst, we've submitted potentially inaccurate accounts to the PL, which might impact our FFP position but (unless this 'fraud' is far more extensive than we think) definitely not the PL's Profit & Sustainability Rules.

 

[BlueAnorak]

Incidently when was Mancini employed by Al Jazira as a consultant? - I'm fairly sure it was the summer well before he became City manager (just prior to Christmas) with City gaving him the managers job when Hughes kept on making a mess.
My sources in Abu Dhabi (where I worked for 2 years with Etisalat) said our chairman was very impressed with the chats he had with Mancini, about how football team management and coaching should be done, which is why he got the job when Hughes continually failed to deliver.
Whether these chats were through Ferrari F1 or consultancy or both I don't know.
It kind of makes the charge ludicrous - though some will claim it was a way to get him in and push Hughes out.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

Mate, you are making people on here believe bullshit about secret tapes and suings and mass conspiracy dossiers with that comment.

TThe Premier League don't want to hammer their brand with a punishment or ban or asterixes or any of that. But there is no smart bomb solution for City here apart from winning the case by whatever means necessary.

Haha, that's up to them, bud. No mention of tapes and such on my part.

The mutually assured destruction is simply City will not accept a guilty verdict and will bog it down in every court until we get the outcome we desire.

The Premier League don't want to hammer their brand, but that's what will happen with this pantomime.

 

[meltonblue]

Murdoch has dripped poison into the nations ear for decades. He has damaged us as much as any politician. It’s difficult to conceive how ownership of the Telegraph by one of the emirates could be worse than that. Only my opinion mind.

I agree but no government should have influence over another countries media. The potential vested interest goes to a whole different scale.

 

[meltonblue]

Incidently when was Mancini employed by Al Jazira as a consultant? - I'm fairly sure it was the summer well before he became City manager (just prior to Christmas) with City gaving him the managers job when Hughes kept on making a mess.
My sources in Abu Dhabi (where I worked for 2 years with Etisalat) said our chairman was very impressed with the chats he had with Mancini, about how football team management and coaching should be done, which is why he got the job when Hughes continually failed to deliver.
Whether these chats were through Ferrari F1 or consultancy or both I don't know.
It kind of makes the charge ludicrous - though some will claim it was a way to get him in and push Hughes out.

I doubt it , Mancini only met with Khaldoon and Mansour for the first time two weeks before he was offered the job for us.

 

[BlueAnorak]

I doubt it , Mancini only met with Khaldoon and Mansour for the first time two weeks before he was offered the job for us.

Not quite true.
They met through Ferrari as Abu Dhabi bought a 5% stake in Ferrari in 2005 and sold it to Fiat after the 3rd Abu Dhabi grand prix in 2010. (Possibly the 2nd GP as the sale back to Fiat was in November and the GP date moves around a bit.)
The Farrari paddock was awash with Abu Dhabi movers and shakers as a result and it helped them get support for the Abu Dhabi grand prix. Mancini can regularly be seen in the Ferrari paddock at races so it's inconceivable Mancini never met Sheikh Mansour or Khaldoon.

Fiat buys back Ferrari stake from Mubadala | The National

After five years Mubadala, the investment company of Abu Dhabi, is selling its 5 per cent stake in Ferrari back to Fiat which has exercised its option to buy back the share in the Italian luxury car maker.

www.thenationalnews.com

 

[meltonblue]

Not quite true.
They met through Ferrari as Abu Dhabi bought a 5% stake in Ferrari in 2005 and sold it to Fiat after the 3rd Abu Dhabi grand prix in 2010. (Possibly the 2nd GP as the sale back to Fiat was in November and the GP date moves around a bit.)
The Farrari paddock was awash with Abu Dhabi movers and shakers as a result and it helped them get support for the Abu Dhabi grand prix. Mancini can regularly be seen in the Ferrari paddock at races so it's inconceivable Mancini never met Sheikh Mansour or Khaldoon.

Fiat buys back Ferrari stake from Mubadala | The National

After five years Mubadala, the investment company of Abu Dhabi, is selling its 5 per cent stake in Ferrari back to Fiat which has exercised its option to buy back the share in the Italian luxury car maker.

www.thenationalnews.com

I’m just going off what he said himself about first contact. That may well have just been in a footballing capacity but still makes it very doubtful he had a contract with Al Jazira before he did with us, particularly given the leak of the contract he signed with them too.

 

[Bald fraud]

Incidently when was Mancini employed by Al Jazira as a consultant? - I'm fairly sure it was the summer well before he became City manager (just prior to Christmas) with City gaving him the managers job when Hughes kept on making a mess.
My sources in Abu Dhabi (where I worked for 2 years with Etisalat) said our chairman was very impressed with the chats he had with Mancini, about how football team management and coaching should be done, which is why he got the job when Hughes continually failed to deliver.
Whether these chats were through Ferrari F1 or consultancy or both I don't know.
It kind of makes the charge ludicrous - though some will claim it was a way to get him in and push Hughes out.

I thought he was invited over to watch us play. We were playing shite so he was offered the job at half time by khaldoon. Who then text Hughes to tell him he was sacked and to clear his desk after the game? Well that’s the way the media portrayed it anyway!

 

[Didsbury Dave]

I think what he means is City will fight to the end if they believe they are innocent and will use all available resources to try to protect themselves. After all it’s a multi billion dollar operation with reputations at stake with potentially thousands of employees under them.

Haha, that's up to them, bud. No mention of tapes and such on my part.

The mutually assured destruction is simply City will not accept a guilty verdict and will bog it down in every court until we get the outcome we desire.

The Premier League don't want to hammer their brand, but that's what will happen with this pantomime.

Yes, I’m sure this will be the case. I hope it doesn’t come to that and we prove our innocence of course. It is casting a cloud over everything and it’s not fair on the people responsible for this historic team.

 

[halfcenturyup]

I’m just going off what he said himself about first contact. That may well have just been in a footballing capacity but still makes it very doubtful he had a contract with Al Jazira before he did with us, particularly given the leak of the contract he signed with them too.

The Guardian reported at the time that Mancini and Khaldoon were "acquaintances" and I am pretty sure the chat at the time was that Mansour had been speaking to him about football issues. So I would imagine there was a prior relationship. If that was contracted, who knows?

As for what Mancini has said, that probably suits both parties. With all the noise around the appointment, the last thing that was needed was talk of some sort of plan to remove Hughes?

 

[meltonblue]

The Guardian reported at the time that Mancini and Khaldoon were "acquaintances" and I am pretty sure the chat at the time was that Mansour had been speaking to him about football issues. So I would imagine there was a prior relationship. If that was contracted, who knows?

As for what Mancini has said, that probably suits both parties. With all the noise around the appointment, the last thing that was needed was talk of some sort of plan to remove Hughes?

Yep, we then denied that and then Mansour himself said in a press conference that he’d met Khaldoon for the first time two weeks before he was offered the job, so Garry Cook at the time had to do a bit of backtracking.

 

[jimmygrimblesboots]

I think your missing the point if your post above is in response to the last few pages of comments on here

Explain

 

[WRicko]

Explain

I don’t believe we have but regardless of the rights or wrongs of the rules and any comparisons with rules in other businesses (the world as you call it ) you cannot break the rules you sign up to.

However my main point and the main discussion on here over recent pages have been about cooking the books fraud etc that seems to be what we are accused of that is wrong in both football and the business / real world regardless of the reasons be it to pass FFP etc