PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

Prestwich_Blue said:
The core allegation was that Etihad only directly contributed £8m, while the rest came from somewhere else. UEFA claimed it was from ADUG, therefore should be treated as equity investment. City & Etihad denied that, and presented evidence at CAS that this additional money had come from central Abu Dhabi funds, for marketing purposes, which CAS accepted as the truth.

Anyone who's followed my postings on here will hopefully confirm that I already knew that, via a document that was in the public domain via a court in New York that was hearing a case under the 'Open Skies Agreement'. This was a presentation which was prepared for Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and explicitly stated that the Etihad sponsorship was being paid by the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. That's why I was quite confident we would beat UEFA at CAS, and that we'll beat the main substantive PL charge.

As to why varying amounts were paid under the Etihad contract, there was no explanation of that but my view (which was slightly supported by the leaked emails) was that we could call off what we wanted, when we wanted it, subject to the overall terms of the contract. I recall Nick Harris getting all giddy and saying that the Etihad contract was for far more than we said it was, due to the amounts paid in 2013, 2014 nd 2016. He added those up and divided by 3, but there was nothing stated for 2015. So the assumption must be that either we received no cash from Etihad or relatively little, having called off additional cash in the previous years.

If Etihad were paying us £600m over 10 years, that doesn't have to mean they'll pay us £60m each and every year. We would probably declare £60m a year in the accounts but how the actual cash flows are structured is completely irrelevant.
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Yes you're absolutely right about those points, because if you're doing invoice based accounting it doesn't matter when the money actually moves gets paid etc, that's part of your cash flow forecast/management.

If ADEC are helping fund the deal, that's nothing to do with City. We've no idea how the money gets to City, whether that's via ADUG or Etihad.

It's the point that Andrew Windowson appears to be asking for money to pay wages on numerous occasions, even when the club would have just received large sums of cash from the Premier League and UEFA. The coffers seem to be empty when they shouldn't be. This is why I think there is lot more going on here than is suggested in these limited emails.

It might not be that they're drawing down money when they want, rather when they absolutely need it. I get the impression all the cash is held by ADUG and only released when City need it, and maybe at the year end (for ADUG or City) to balance the books.
 
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