PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

jamielowndes said:
I genuinely don't think the Prem are out to "get" us.

In my opinion, the PL have found some kind of smoke regarding the things named (Mancini, Etisalat, player wages etc) and they've rightfully done their due diligence.

However the club refused to cooperate with any investigation. Therefore the PL has reason to believe we're cheating and has no proof that we aren't.

There is no way in hell the businessmen running the club would let it go this far of they didn't have the evidence they needed to exonerate us. If we get proved guilty of everything, it absolutely destroys the clubs standing in football. And I mean actual football, not dickheads who live on Twitter or spend 8 hours a day in front of their podcasting equipment.

I believe we'll take a heavy fine for the non-cooperation and the club are prepared for that as collateral damage.

The PL let it stew too long from the announcement and we're going to let them take the fall for that.
Click to expand...
The club havent refused to cooperate
When the investigation was launched the PL asked for documentation some of which was deemed by the club to be outside the remit of the PL and its rules, the club believing that handing over the all that the PL asked for would facilitate their commercial rivals so they refused. The club went to the courts to ask them to decide. Unfortunately the judge decided that the PL were within their rights and that, I assume, there was nothing unfair in those rules The club appealed the decision but the High Court decided not to overrule it, they also asked that the hearing and decision should be kept private and this was supported by the PL however the judge decided it was in the public interest to allow it to be public, she also commented about the time the PL were taking and that they should get on with it as City had won numerous PLs in the meantime and that was about a year before the charges were announced.
The club have since cooperated, but i would guess they haven't just opened the books and will provide information when asked for. They will not make it easy eg supply a document knowing that once its read another one will be required and so on, this is standard practice.

www.theguardian.com

Court ruling shows Premier League still investigating Manchester City over FFP

Manchester City strongly deny wrongdoing regarding financial fair play, which the Premier League started to investigate in March 2019
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

 
KS55 said:
Yep, but they will be relying on documents.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure the documents will be enough. If they can't show knowing concealment it's all time limited. And to show knowing concealment, they will presumably have to prove intent. Unless there is a document saying the club split the salary to reduce losses it seems to me they don't have any chance on Mancini.
 
Gordyola said:
The club havent refused to cooperate
When the investigation was launched the PL asked for documentation some of which was deemed by the club to be outside the remit of the PL and its rules, the club believing that handing over the all that the PL asked for would facilitate their commercial rivals so they refused. The club went to the courts to ask them to decide. Unfortunately the judge decided that the PL were within their rights and that, I assume, there was nothing unfair in those rules The club appealed the decision but the High Court decided not to overrule it, they also asked that the hearing and decision should be kept private and this was supported by the PL however the judge decided it was in the public interest to allow it to be public, she also commented about the time the PL were taking and that they should get on with it as City had won numerous PLs in the meantime and that was about a year before the charges were announced.
The club have since cooperated, but i would guess they haven't just opened the books and will provide information when asked for. They will not make it easy eg supply a document knowing that once its read another one will be required and so on, this is standard practice.

www.theguardian.com

Court ruling shows Premier League still investigating Manchester City over FFP

Manchester City strongly deny wrongdoing regarding financial fair play, which the Premier League started to investigate in March 2019
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Click to expand...
Agreed. The club have tested the legitimacy of the PL requests for info and their rules via the courts in order to ascertain what we should and should not provide. Like UEFA, the PL were hanging their hats on the illegally acquired emails. City quite rightly, probably following legal advice, wanted to be crystal clear what information should and should not be in scope.. That does not mean we have not cooperated. I remember when the PL were in the early stages of their investigation they noted that they were pleased with how things were going and with City's level of cooperation. That position clearly changed when the PL were seeking information that City's lawyers probably felt they were not entitled to receive. I am pretty sure City will have learned from the poor handling of the investigation by UEFA. Once bitten, twice shy. If the independent commission finds against City regarding the allegations relating to non cooperation they will have to see evidence that proves City's actions were unreasonable based on the facts. Plus, they will need to be satisfied the PLs requests for info were reasonable too. It is certainly not a given that City have been uncooperative. We can only speculate at this point in time.
 
Bez said:
Agreed. The club have tested the legitimacy of the PL requests for info and their rules via the courts in order to ascertain what we should and should not provide. Like UEFA, the PL were hanging their hats on the illegally acquired emails. City quite rightly, probably following legal advice, wanted to be crystal clear what information should and should not be in scope.. That does not mean we have not cooperated. I remember when the PL were in the early stages of their investigation they noted that they were pleased with how things were going and with City's level of cooperation. That position clearly changed when the PL were seeking information that City's lawyers probably felt they were not entitled to receive. I am pretty sure City will have learned from the poor handling of the investigation by UEFA. Once bitten, twice shy. If the independent commission finds against City regarding the allegations relating to non cooperation they will have to see evidence that proves City's actions were unreasonable based on the facts. Plus, they will need to be satisfied the PLs requests for info were reasonable too. It is certainly not a given that City have been uncooperative. We can only speculate at this point in time.
Click to expand...
I got the impression that the PL were constantly asking for info in a haphazard way, causing major problems for the club. I think they were doing that to try and catch us out and City just got tired of it but it also adds significant workload and legal costs every time there’s a request. We know how unprofessional the PL are as we saw the inaccuracies in the original press releases which would never have happened in a proper organisation, it really was amateur and no doubt so were their info requests.
 
Bez said:
Agreed. The club have tested the legitimacy of the PL requests for info and their rules via the courts in order to ascertain what we should and should not provide. Like UEFA, the PL were hanging their hats on the illegally acquired emails. City quite rightly, probably following legal advice, wanted to be crystal clear what information should and should not be in scope.. That does not mean we have not cooperated. I remember when the PL were in the early stages of their investigation they noted that they were pleased with how things were going and with City's level of cooperation. That position clearly changed when the PL were seeking information that City's lawyers probably felt they were not entitled to receive. I am pretty sure City will have learned from the poor handling of the investigation by UEFA. Once bitten, twice shy. If the independent commission finds against City regarding the allegations relating to non cooperation they will have to see evidence that proves City's actions were unreasonable based on the facts. Plus, they will need to be satisfied the PLs requests for info were reasonable too. It is certainly not a given that City have been uncooperative. We can only speculate at this point in time.
Click to expand...

I think there is no doubt the club hasn't co-operated as much as it could. The question is if the club has co-operated as much as they had to.

I doubt very much the club held back information the PL was entitled to, after the court rulings.

But, even at CAS, the club was criticised for not providing UEFA with the evidence it presented at CAS, iirc saying that witholding information from the investigation that proves innocence for a later appeal makes a mockery of the investigative powers of UEFA. That was the basis of the CAS fine, I think. It will be interesting to see if the club appeals a fine for non-cooperation in this case and what the merits of each side would be, as this is still the PL process, unlike UEFA/CAS.
 
jamielowndes said:
Other clubs are going to have a vested interest in our downfall because it benefits them.

But to say that means the PL is actively collaborating with those 9 clubs to ensure our downfall is tin foil hat territory.
Click to expand...
I am no conspiracy theorist. I dont believe all other teams are out to get us. There are no brown envielopes, no ref bungs or PGMOL conspiracy. And there isnt 9 teams trying to bring us down in a concerted effort.

But I do know how things work when finacial interests align and the biases that form around that. Are you aware of that in this case and how that plays against City? How it is in the intrests of so many parties that City are not the dominant team for a generation?

But thsaats not enough to assume we are being targetted on its own. So we look at the charges themselves and how hastily they have been produced and the way they have been produced (I'll assume you know all of that so I woont bang on about that). But then the impact of being found guilty - Our owners go to jail for defrauding HMRC.. (I assume you know all that too). Thats just not going to happen, so why have they over-stretched themselves on a charge that cannot be followed through? Why have they brought up charges that have already been answered to UEFA and CAS and answered? I mean thats going to be embarrasing to the PL case.

We have legal experts on here who agree it is confusing as to why the PL have gone this far for something they cant win (Unless there is some hidden thing we dont know about)

Then our owners and their replies to the charges. How this is not true (Obvs we would say that but), Pep himself said he has seen the evidence that we are innocent and he will be staying. Our owners saying we are not being held accountable for otheeer teams failures.. There's so many things that all point towards a targetting of City

It is far from tin foiil territory and that accusation from you makes me assume you dont really know the case inside out?
 
halfcenturyup said:
I think there is no doubt the club hasn't co-operated as much as it could. The question is if the club has co-operated as much as they had to.

I doubt very much the club held back information the PL was entitled to, after the court rulings.

But, even at CAS, the club was criticised for not providing UEFA with the evidence it presented at CAS, iirc saying that witholding information from the investigation that proves innocence for a later appeal makes a mockery of the investigative powers of UEFA. That was the basis of the CAS fine, I think. It will be interesting to see if the club appeals a fine for non-cooperation in this case and what the merits of each side would be, as this is still the PL process, unlike UEFA/CAS.
Click to expand...
It wasn’t a CAS fine, they ruled on the €30M UEFA fine for none cooperation and reduced it to $10M as they accepted the clubs mitigation, that they had not cooperated due to the leaks from a confidential investigation. City had in fact tested it with a appeal to CAS, to get the case thrown out prior to the UCL expulsion hearing but, CAS refused to rule on it
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top