PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

Keith Moon said:
Looking at the specific PSR rules the Premier League alleges City breached, maybe the dispute revolves around Related Party Transactions and Fair Market Value. The Premier League may be arguing that some or all of City's Abu Dhabi-linked sponsors should be treated as related parties, and that the sponsorship deals were not recorded at FMV, allowing it to make retrospective FMV adjustments. That might explain why this has dragged on for so long.
Click to expand...
Not what we were charged with.

The values have been approved and ratified. How the values were paid into our bank account is the issue.
 
waspish said:
Groundhog Day when people post possibilities that already been discussed 100 of pages back.
Click to expand...

We really needed that FAQ from @Chris in London to be pinned and updated each time a new issue was introduced or discussed further. Just to stop the same issues being re-discussed over and over again. Over the last three years, I think every possible scenario will have been considered.

Not sure why it was unpinned really ....
 
cptaidan88 said:
Not what we were charged with.

The values have been approved and ratified. How the values were paid into our bank account is the issue.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's a fair point. RPT nature / FMV of sponsorships could very well be part of the allegations. I seem to remember the initial APT award referred to PL allegations that the RPT rules weren't sufficient to ensure FMV as they relied on retrospective self-reporting and even referred to the 115 case as evidence of that.

It's a pretty esoteric argument, though, and one difficult to prove after 7-17 years, imho, for a number of reasons.

Edit: I had thought that, rather than trying to prove the related party nature of the sponsorships, the PL may have argued on the issue of ownership. If the PL alleged state influence on the ownership, they would consider (almost all) the AD sponsorships RPTs by default. They would still have the same issues proving it, though. I always thought it strange that ownership was moved from ADUG to Newton during the investigation.
 
Last edited:
halfcenturyup said:
Over the last three years, I think every possible scenario will have been considered.
Click to expand...
nah.
i bet we can come up with others,
much more ludicrous than some of the insane ones thus far posited.

like...


when the 3-person panel were notified of their appointments, two of them were already in a secret sexual relationship and dared not mention it as a possible complication lest the truth came out, but during the early stages of the process one of the secret couple had a fling with the third member of the panel and all hell broke loose leading to a total breakdown in their working relationships which, again, they couldn't confess.
in the meantime the other one of the secret couple got it together with the third one, at first purely for spiteful, scornful reasons but guess what, those two ended up falling in love and more hell broke loose, no work got done on the case for over a year, until one day they finally realised they all actually love each other and have become a three-way affair, so, at last, work restarted on the case, interspersed with lots of office sex, but nonetheless it is back on track.
 
halfcenturyup said:
Actually, it's a fair point. RPT nature / FMV of sponsorships could very well be part of the allegations. I seem to remember the initial APT award referred to PL allegations that the RPT rules weren't sufficient to ensure FMV as they relied on retrospective self-reporting and even referred to the 115 case as evidence of that.

It's a pretty esoteric argument, though, and one difficult to prove after 7-17 years, imho, for a number of reasons.

Edit: I had thought that, rather than trying to prove the related party nature of the sponsorships, the PL may have argued on the issue of ownership. If the PL alleged state influence on the ownership, they would consider (almost all) the AD sponsorships RPTs by default. They would still have the same issues proving it, though. I always thought it strange that ownership was moved from ADUG to Newton during the investigation.
Click to expand...

My memory isnt great, so possibly major fuck ups here, or obviously things recently discussed. Apologies in advance if so.

But didn't we bring about the APT case? If so, I ask what was the point.

What came out was the interest free loans not being included (amongst lots of other things). Could we argue that we went about our business trying to stay within the rules in good faith, like other teams have done, and yet everyone used different loopholes because the rules were garbage and poorly written?
 
Keith Moon said:
Looking at the specific PSR rules the Premier League alleges City breached, maybe the dispute revolves around Related Party Transactions and Fair Market Value. The Premier League may be arguing that some or all of City's Abu Dhabi-linked sponsors should be treated as related parties, and that the sponsorship deals were not recorded at FMV, allowing it to make retrospective FMV adjustments. That might explain why this has dragged on for so long.
Click to expand...
No
 
cptaidan88 said:
Not what we were charged with.

The values have been approved and ratified. How the values were paid into our bank account is the issue.
Click to expand...
There's two issues I suspect. One relates to the same things UEFA charged us with (i.e. disguised equity investment via sham sponsorships). These allegations were dismissed by CAS and while the PL commission aren't bound by that ruling, it'd need some very significant new evidence to rule differently. The Etihad, Etisalat etc., sponsorships have been assessed as fair value by the PL and UEFA so I doubt that's part of it.

I do strongly suspect that the PL are going after the related parties issue, claiming that Etihad and the other Abu Dhabi sponsors are related parties. But I very much doubt this will succeed either and, even if they somehow did succeed in having some sponsors declared as related parties, that would merely involve a note in the accounts and would have zero impact on our financial position.

The impact of having to declare these as related parties would be that we'd probably have to declare the value of sponsorships with any partner deemed to be related.

So, in summary, these charges are a pile of horseshit, without any serious substance.
 
pepguardiola'smoustache said:
nah.
i bet we can come up with others,
much more ludicrous than some of the insane ones thus far posited.

like...


when the 3-person panel were notified of their appointments, two of them were already in a secret sexual relationship and dared not mention it as a possible complication lest the truth came out, but during the early stages of the process one of the secret couple had a fling with the third member of the panel and all hell broke loose leading to a total breakdown in their working relationships which, again, they couldn't confess.
in the meantime the other one of the secret couple got it together with the third one, at first purely for spiteful, scornful reasons but guess what, those two ended up falling in love and more hell broke loose, no work got done on the case for over a year, until one day they finally realised they all actually love each other and have become a three-way affair, so, at last, work restarted on the case, interspersed with lots of office sex, but nonetheless it is back on track.
Click to expand...

You are suggesting we have three Lords on the panel? \0/
 
mattcity5 said:
My memory isnt great, so possibly major fuck ups here, or obviously things recently discussed. Apologies in advance if so.

But didn't we bring about the APT case? If so, I ask what was the point.

What came out was the interest free loans not being included (amongst lots of other things). Could we argue that we went about our business trying to stay within the rules in good faith, like other teams have done, and yet everyone used different loopholes because the rules were garbage and poorly written?
Click to expand...

There is the score-draw (or slight City win) view on the outcome of the APT case in that:

City won on having the rules declared null and void and (eventually, we think) getting the mega-Etihad deal accepted;

and the PL won by having the need for APT rules confirmed as the RPT rules weren't effective enough (for the two reasons I mentioned - they were ex post rules and they relied on self-reporting). Part of the PL's justification for that referred to the 115 case which, I think, implies RPT and possibly ownership are part of the allegations.

Personally, I think the City APT win far outweighs the PL APT win, at least as far as City are concerned. But not everyone thinks that.
 
cptaidan88 said:
Not what we were charged with.

The values have been approved and ratified. How the values were paid into our bank account is the issue.
Click to expand...
In Section 1, we are accused of knowingly submitting information relating to sponsorship revenue and related parties that did not provide a true and fair view of the club's financial position.

In Section 4, Rule E.54 states that the Premier League Board has the power to determine whether revenue from a Related Party Transaction has been recorded at Fair Market Value. If it concludes that it has not, the League can make an adjustment and substitute its own Fair Market Value assessment.

So my point, which has probably been done to death on here over the last three years, is that maybe the Premier League's case is simply that some or all of the Abu Dhabi-linked sponsors should have been treated as related parties, either because of ownership links or because of the influence figures such as Simon Pearce and Khaldoon Al Mubarak were alleged to have through their positions within the Executive Affairs Authority.

If that's the route they've gone down, then, just as we saw in the APT case, they may have instructed an external firm to assess whether the sponsorship deals were at Fair Market Value. Presumably that assessment didn't come back in City's favour, which then leaves City having to prove either that the companies were not related parties in the first place, or that even if they were, the deals were still at FMV.
 
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