PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

TedofChume said:
I don't think this is the case.

This is a civil matter going through a private arbitration process, usually that's enough. Whatever the panel decides, doesn't necessarily mean there will be a criminal investigation. Was Roy Keane criminally charged for assaulting Haaland? Firstly someone has to complain to the right body (I think the DTI or Companies House). It also has to be in the public interest and there has to be sufficient evidence to prove false accounting. Is it in the public interest to punish City twice for the same thing? Add to that directors very rarely get prosecuted for anything like this unless HMRC think they're owed money or someone has directly lost a lot of money.

The two allegations relate to sponsorship deals (being worth less than stated and/or not paid by the sponsors but paid by a third party) and other third parties paying staff extra money (Mancini and Toure). I'm not certain that either of these are crimes (unless there are tax implications) even if they are true (I'm not sure they breach Premier League rules either!)

I might be wrong about the above, but the government haven't lost any money (in fact might have to repay City VAT/corp tax paid if this was proven) and no one has been directly hurt by it, so why would a criminal investigation or case follow? Who would pursue it?

I am not aware of the criminal courts over turning civil cases like this because by their very nature they are separate matters, between separate parties and have different burdens of proof and different rules/laws to assess them. Different outcomes are common, even if the fundamental issue is the same.

At the end of the day all this really is is a contractual dispute.

So no I don't think it is a fait acompli that a criminal investigation would follow.
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"Overturning" was in inverted commas, as the criminal courts can't actually overturn a civil court judgement, of course.

I am surprised, though, that you think there wouldn't be a criminal investigation if it was found in a civil court that the directors had knowingly and deliberately filed fraudulently incorrect accounts for a decade. The idea that breaching the legal requirements of the Companies Acts isn't serious enough unless HMRC has been undercut is odd to me. All the major players are directors of other UK companies. There is no public interest in making sure they can't do this again, or that they are suitable to be in charge of a company?

You may be right. Just seems strange to me. I would have thought a criminal investigation would be inevitable ....
 
Newman Noggs said:
This is correct. I'd add that, if there were criminal allegations, the prosecuting authorities would not wait years for the civil action to be completed before starting an investigation.
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I know there are other considerations at play in terms of what criminal investigatory bodies do and don't investigate. However, even if one limits oneself to the quality of the evidence available in the public domain, there's no way they'd start looking at this seriously as a criminal case.

Unless there's compelling evidence available to the PL of which we remain unaware, it's hard to see them getting close to meeting even the civil standard of proof in terms of the charges against us. There's nothing that's public knowledge that might come close to satisfying the much more stringent criminal standard of proof with respect to the conduct of individuals involved in the matters covered by the accusations against MCFC. That being so, it's reason enough for any relevant criminal investigatory body to decline to go anywhere near it.
 
petrusha said:
I know there are other considerations at play in terms of what criminal investigatory bodies do and don't investigate. However, even if one limits oneself to the quality of the evidence available in the public domain, there's no way they'd start looking at this seriously as a criminal case.

Unless there's compelling evidence available to the PL of which we remain unaware, it's hard to see them getting close to meeting even the civil standard of proof in terms of the charges against us. There's nothing that's public knowledge that might come close to satisfying the much more stringent criminal standard of proof with respect to the conduct of individuals involved in the matters covered by the accusations against MCFC. That being so, it's reason enough for any relevant criminal investigatory body to decline to go anywhere near it.
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On the basis of what we know at the moment, there is no way that the panel will find in favour of the PL on the most serious issues. So the whole thing is moot, really, but what we are discussing at the moment is what happens if the PL does have something we don't know about and the panel finds in favour of the PL.

It seems to me, at the very least, in view of the public interest in the case, the profile of the individuals involved, their other shareholdings and directorships and the egregious nature of the conduct there would have to be an investigation to determine if there is enough evidence for a Companies Acts prosecution.

If there isn't, it reflects badly on the panel's judgement, irrespective of the different burdens of proof (talk about a "technicality"). If there is, but the prosecution fails, likewise. Which is (one of) the reason(s) why I think the panel finding in favour of the PL on the most serious issues is very unlikely unless they really have a slam dunk that will hold up to the higher burden. It won't be painted like that, of course, but there cogency-o-meter will be at atmospheric levels, I think.

But ...

wtf do I know

Edit: Good to have you around, btw. Hope everything is good with you and yours.
 
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Good god, are we back to the "will there be a criminal trial if found guilty..." nonsense? Can anyone recall how long the last one lasted so I can plan to come back when it's over? What came next last time? I've forgotten where we are on the Groundhog day merry-go-round.
 
Centurions said:
Good god, are we back to the "will there be a criminal trial if found guilty..." nonsense? Can anyone recall how long the last one lasted so I can plan to come back when it's over? What came next last time? I've forgotten where we are on the Groundhog day merry-go-round.
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PL Governance is a crock of shit.
Close thread. Await verdict.
Start next 1,000 pages of Yah Boo, Told You So.
 
Centurions said:
Good god, are we back to the "will there be a criminal trial if found guilty..." nonsense? Can anyone recall how long the last one lasted so I can plan to come back when it's over? What came next last time? I've forgotten where we are on the Groundhog day merry-go-round.
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The PL like UEFA can find City guilty and punish without evidence, In the second UEFA case City did something clever, they forced CAS to only look at the evidence, hence the only charge proved had no evidence. They have done something similar with the PL panel. The investigators tying all the charges together with the bit that has no evidence, ( non cooperation ).
So it is possible the PL finds us guilty, and it is highly likely that City would take this all the way to Crown Court, at a guess i would say 2 to 3 more years of this, Halfcenturyup post was excellent because it has a good chance of happening, and was very informative:)
 
Centurions said:
Good god, are we back to the "will there be a criminal trial if found guilty..." nonsense? Can anyone recall how long the last one lasted so I can plan to come back when it's over? What came next last time? I've forgotten where we are on the Groundhog day merry-go-round.
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I've never bought this apocalyptic view that Stefan and others have taken. Had we made deliberate attempts to conceal or over-inflate income we had received, or knowingly misstated costs we'd incurred in order to show a false financial position, then there might well be an issue. But we haven't.

We've been accused of over-stating the Etihad & Etisalat sponsorships on the grounds that the former only provided a small part of the rated sponsorship, and the latter was paid by ADUG. But CAS put all that to bed comprehensively and unless the PL has incontrovertible evidence that wasn't available to CAS then there clearly been no fraud. And that's the biggest one financially. Had we only received £10m from Etihad but declared it as £60m, with a £50m debt to make up the difference, with that never being paid to us, then that could well be seen as fraudulent. But we correctly declared all revenue we received from Etihad and CAS established that this wasn't disguised owner investment.

Mancini's Al Jazira contract was fairly minuscule in comparison to other costs, at a time when we were reporting huge losses. So that is hardly an attempt to conduct a major fraud.

The image rights stuff was actually an attempt to boost revenue by selling IP to what was probably not a truly independent third party. It wasn't about keeping costs off the books but getting income on the books to try to avoid FFP penalties. UEFA were aware of this well before 2018, yet no action was taken, other than an agreement to end the scheme. Had it been considered fraudulent, then the PL (the licensor) would almost certainly have been informed and action taken. It's entirely possible that as that licensor, the PL were involved anyway. Yet nothing came of it.

For those reasons I highly doubt that any criminal action would follow even in the unlikey event we were found in breach of all three charges.
 
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salfordbluetrue said:
The PL like UEFA can find City guilty and punish without evidence, In the second UEFA case City did something clever, they forced CAS to only look at the evidence, hence the only charge proved had no evidence. They have done something similar with the PL panel. The investigators tying all the charges together with the bit that has no evidence, ( non cooperation ).
So it is possible the PL finds us guilty, and it is highly likely that City would take this all the way to Crown Court, at a guess i would say 2 to 3 more years of this, Halfcenturyup post was excellent because it has a good chance of happening, and was very informative:)
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I wouldn't take anything I say as gospel. :)

And for the record, I agree with @petrusha and @Prestwich_Blue (who would dare not to?) that it won't come to any of that because, based on what we think the issues are, the PL won't be able to prove the most serious allegations, which are about the funding of sponsorships. The rest is just dressing.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
I've never bought this apocalyptic view that Stefan and others have taken. Had we made deliberate attempts to conceal or over-inflate income we had received, or knowingly misstated costs we'd incurred in order to show a false financial position, then there might well be an issue. But we haven't.

We've been accused of over-stating the Etihad & Etisalat sponsorships on the grounds that the former only provided a small part of the rated sponsorship, and the latter was paid by ADUG. But CAS put all that to bed comprehensively and unless the PL has incontrovertible evidence that wasn't available to CAS then there clearly been no fraud. And that's the biggest one financially. Had we only received £10m from Etihad but declared it as £60m, with a £50m debt to make up the difference, with that never being paid to us, then that could well be seen as fraudulent. But we correctly declared all revenue we received from Etihad and CAS established that this wasn't disguised owner investment.

Mancini's Al Jazira contract was fairly minuscule in comparison to other costs, at a time when we were reporting huge losses. So that is hardly an attempt to conduct a major fraud.

The image rights stuff was actually an attempt to boost revenue by selling IP to what was probably not a truly independent third party. It wasn't about keeping costs off the books but getting income on the books to try to avoid FFP penalties. UEFA were aware of this well before 2018, yet no action was taken, other than an agreement to end the scheme. Had it been considered fraudulent, then the PL (the licensor) would almost certainly have been informed and action taken. It's entirely possible that as that licensor, the PL were involved anyway. Yet nothing came of it.

For those reasons I highly doubt that any criminal action would follow even in the unlikey event we were found in breach of all three charges.
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On the image rights stuff, it is miniscule compared to the financial shenanigans Chelsea have been getting up to recently, and also the clubs selling academy players to each other, in order to gain cashflow advantage. These things are loopholes. There's nothing wrong with exploiting them before they are closed.
 
Paladin said:
On the image rights stuff, it is miniscule compared to the financial shenanigans Chelsea have been getting up to recently, and also the clubs selling academy players to each other, in order to gain cashflow advantage. These things are loopholes. There's nothing wrong with exploiting them before they are closed.
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Thanks for reminding me that I meant to say much the same thing. The image rights sale to Fordham was a case of selling something we owned to someone else, who we might have some sort of association with. Very much the same as Chelsea have done, or have tried to do.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Thanks for reminding me that I meant to say much the same thing. The image rights sale to Fordham was a case of selling something we owned to someone else, who we might have some sort of association with. Very much the same as Chelsea have done, or have tried to do.
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Agreed with a couple of caveats.

First, we don't know much about Fordham, do we? It may not be the transaction itself with which the PL has a problem, but some of the terms. The ADUG indemnity, for example.

Second, we don't even know the image rights issue is about Fordham. It may just be about Toure. The alleged breaches referred to the panel more closely reflect the timing of Toure's contracts than Fordham's, tbh. It may be both, of course.

This is the one allegation where we are short of enough information to come to a conclusion, I think. That doesn't mean I think it's a problem. Just that more information would have been helpful in the assessment of the allegation.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Thanks for reminding me that I meant to say much the same thing. The image rights sale to Fordham was a case of selling something we owned to someone else, who we might have some sort of association with. Very much the same as Chelsea have done, or have tried to do.
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Wasn’t Fordham run by a mate of Soriano? Did Soriano work for them at one time? Was Fordham supported financially by ADUG. Were Fordham already handling City players’ image rights when we ‘sold’ them? These questions may come up. I don’t know the answers, do you PB? Could be worse than a small irrelevance.
 
KS55 said:
Wasn’t Fordham run by a mate of Soriano? Did Soriano work for them at one time? Was Fordham supported financially by ADUG. Were Fordham already handling City players’ image rights when we ‘sold’ them? These questions may come up. I don’t know the answers, do you PB? Could be worse than a small irrelevance.
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Whatever it was we did though don’t think we hid it and when we were told we couldn’t do it we stopped. As far as I understand anyway.
 
halfcenturyup said:
On the basis of what we know at the moment, there is no way that the panel will find in favour of the PL on the most serious issues. So the whole thing is moot, really, but what we are discussing at the moment is what happens if the PL does have something we don't know about and the panel finds in favour of the PL.

It seems to me, at the very least, in view of the public interest in the case, the profile of the individuals involved, their other shareholdings and directorships and the egregious nature of the conduct there would have to be an investigation to determine if there is enough evidence for a Companies Acts prosecution.

If there isn't, it reflects badly on the panel's judgement, irrespective of the different burdens of proof (talk about a "technicality"). If there is, but the prosecution fails, likewise. Which is (one of) the reason(s) why I think the panel finding in favour of the PL on the most serious issues is very unlikely unless they really have a slam dunk that will hold up to the higher burden. It won't be painted like that, of course, but there cogency-o-meter will be at atmospheric levels, I think.

But ...

wtf do I know

Edit: Good to have you around, btw. Hope everything is good with you and yours.
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The PL want us to disclose all that they ask for, or else be accused of failure to cooperate. Well, would it not be the same if the PL come up with something in the hearing that has not been disclosed to City. Could we accuse they of failure to cooperate?
 
KS55 said:
Wasn’t Fordham run by a mate of Soriano? Did Soriano work for them at one time? Was Fordham supported financially by ADUG. Were Fordham already handling City players’ image rights when we ‘sold’ them? These questions may come up. I don’t know the answers, do you PB? Could be worse than a small irrelevance.
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This might interest you. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2...illand-abu-dhabi-prince-was-known-as-the-boss

David Rowland's son and Graham Robeson were Fordham directors.
 
its grim up north said:
The PL want us to disclose all that they ask for, or else be accused of failure to cooperate. Well, would it not be the same if the PL come up with something in the hearing that has not been disclosed to City. Could we accuse they of failure to cooperate?
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The club should know by now everything the PL has. I think the PL can only introduce new evidence with the approval of the panel and if it is fully disclosed beforehand with sufficient time available to defend against it. I think.

I was more meaning the likes of us. I think we understand most of the issues pretty well. The exception, for me at least, is the image rights allegation.
 
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