CAS judgement: UEFA ban overturned, City exonerated (report out p603)

A fucking executive at Bayern fucking munich asking for things to be fairer between competing teams. Fucking lol
Every time they make a new appointment anywhere within the club the new incumbent is wheeled out to comment on ffp and City. It wouldn't be any sillier if we got Moonchester and Moonbeam speaking out on what a totally vile and nasty club Bayern are, the difference being at least they would be telling the truth.
 
Very good summary Colin, thank you.

As regards point 8, non co-operation, this is why the issue of the non-production of the scoping document was an issue. It's absence could be indicative of a "fishing exercise".

I can also see why UEFA banned us. From their perspective, whilst the evidence was flimsy, it was all they had and City were refusing to co-operate (quite rightly in principle if not in practice, in my opinion).

That being the case, the choice is give up, walk away and say "sorry folks, looks dodgy but there's nothing we can do" with the inevitable shit-storm that would bring down on UEFA and, collaterally, the club which is, ironically, the worst outcome for everyone.

So they had no option but to make a judgement on what they had, knowing that it would likely go to CAS. The non-co-operation charge, far from being a "red-herring" was a fail-safe in case we actually did have the irrefutable evidence we said we had. The CAS verdict effectively said, "you were wrong but drew the conclusion you did because City didn't co-operate".

The fine reflects the fact that CAS simply cannot endorse non-co-operation with a regulatory body. After all, it's hardly uncommon for a guilty party to claim to investigators that they have irrefutable evidence of their innocence but can't or won't produce it. A different court might decide that non-cooperation is justifiable in certain circumstances but I don't blame CAS for not setting the precedent. I'll be surprised if City appeal.
what a load of bollox.
They banned us because we were City.
Any accusation would have done.
 
what a load of bollox.
They banned us because we were City.
Any accusation would have done.
Just finished the BFTB podcast and was talking about being puzzled about why UEFA were seemingly so keen to rush this appeal through, as I said in my earlier long post. I can understand why we were keen to resolve it before next season but less so as to why UEFA were. My fellow podcaster got it on the nose when he pointed out that a certain team that seemed to be struggling for a top 4 place would be crippled financially if they didn't get in the CL and that 5th place would be good enough for that if we were banned next season. Then it all suddenly made perfect sense.
 
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Who investigates UEFA for all the leaks ?
Perhaps we need to turn the process on its head. If UEFA think they have a strong case let them show it CAS initially, then if they find it to be legitimate let punishment take its course. With the added rider that the accused can refer it CAS if the fine/punishment is too punitive.
 
In preparation for a Bolt From The Blue podcast I'll be doing shortly, I've been going over the CAS judgement and hopefully you'll find this summary useful. I've listed the 10 points we based our appeal on then how CAS ruled on each one.

Our appeal
We appealed on ten specific grounds, as well on the general grounds of the admissibility/veracity of the hacked emails. The 10 specific grounds were:
  1. The core allegation (about Etihad & Etisalat sponsorships being disguised equity funding) is false.
  2. The hacked emails provide no proper factual basis for the AC's decision.
  3. The case against us is based on inference, whereas the AC declared it was "comfortably satisfied" that the documents were evidence of these arrangements.
  4. The evidence clearly demonstrates that Etihad & Etisalat met their sponsorship obligations in full, received valuable rights in respect of them, and none of them were funded by ADUG.
  5. The case is commercially irrational (i.e. why would we give Etiahd/Etisalat valuable commercial rights for a fraction of their value).
  6. The alleged breaches are in any event settled (via the 2014 agreement) and time barred.
  7. Accounting and the accrual accounting basis (This is about how we recorded these and whether our accounting was correct).
  8. The alleged non-cooperation by the club.
  9. The CFCB abused its obligation of due process.
  10. The proportionality of the sanction.
1. CAS clearly found in our favour on this one. There was some issue over the Etisalat sponsorships having been fronted by ADUG but it seems the AC agreed that their obligation to ADUG had eventually been satisfied. However the Etisalat payments in 2012 and 2013 were time barred by CAS so weren't material to this case.

2. CAS agreed on this. While they agreed the emails provided a basis for investigation by the CFCB they agreed there wasn't enough in them to prove, to their comfortable satisfactin, a demonstrable pattern of events. Just because they implied a course o action, there was nothing to show the action had been carried out. This basically bears out the poit I made all along that these emails were selective and shown out of context.

3. See (2) above basically.

4. CAS agreed on this, that there was clear evidence that the arrangements in scope had been met in full by the parties concerned and there was no evidence that they'd been funded by ADUG. UEFA's main issue was with the fact that Etihad made two distinct payments, one for £59.5m and the other for £8m. They'd jumped to a conclusion that ADUG must have provided the larger one but witnesses explained they came from two separate budgets, one being Etihad's marketing budget (the £8m) with the £59.5m coming from what was described as "central funds", which could have been from debt, the airline's ahareholder or other third parties. In any event, it didn't matter as CAS rules the weight of evidence showed that these were Etihad's funds.

5. CAS didn't agree with this but that was essentially irrelevant in view of (4), that Etihad & Etisalat paid the full amount and got what they paid for.

6. CAS didn't agree about the 2014 Settlement Agreement. It decided that the CFCB were justified in re-opening this as there was seemingly nothing in the 2014 agreement about it being a full & final settlement. If new information came to light that put a different slant on that agreement and the breaches it covered, then UEFA had the right to go back to it. It did agree on the time-barring but ruled that neither side had got the date for this cut-off right. What they did was interpret UEFA's rule about time-barring and work backwards, ruling that "prosecution" started when the decision was referred to the AC. As that was on May 15th 2019, then anything that occurred prior to May 16th 2014 (which is when the settlement agreement was signed) was time-barred. This therefore ruled out the accounts for the years 2012 and 2013, when the disputed payments from Etisalat were made, thereby rendering those, and earlier Etihad payments, as time-barred. But later Etihad payments were in scope.

however the CFCB employed what seemed to have been a very speculative argument that because FFP requires an aggregation of 3 years' figures, then if the 2014 accounts were in scope, the the 2013 and 2012 ones were as well, as they were all aprt of the same submission. CAS rejected this argument as nonsensical, as the prior year figures were simply a resubmission of when those were hte current year figures, which was the only time they could be considered as relevant.

7. Couldn't see anything in the judgement specific to this point but again it's irrelevant given that CAS found there was no issue with the Etihad sponsorship. It seems to be about a point I covered during the week that supposed that Etihad agreed a £55m a year sponsorship with us for 4 years. They might pay us £90m a year in the first 2 years then £20m for the last 2 years. But we'd still show it as £55m a year, assuming they got the same consideration over those 4 years regarding the advertising rights they got for that. In other words, the timing of the cashflow was very much secondary to the performance of the contract for accounting purposes.

8. This was quite interesting. Obviously CAS found for UEFA on this point but what it ultimately boiled down to was that when UEFA initially approached us, following the Der Spiegel articles and the opening of its investigation in March 2019, we refused to provide the evidence that we ultimately provided to CAS, plus we only sent Ferran Soriano to a hearing on April 19th 2019, rather than a list of witnesses he CFCB had asked for. The CAS judgement does mention, in a couple of places, that we did this on external legal advice. Presumably this was on the "fruit of the poisoned tree" principle, whereby we refused to acknowledge that the emails were genuine or that they gave the CFCB enough evidence to mount their investigation.

Eventually of course we provided all the evidence and witnesses, bar a run of emails that might have been linked to one of the hacked emails. UEFA had failed to push for these and agreed that they would not require them to be produced at CAS, as we claimed this was an incredibly wide response and it would take us too long to find all these. So I suspect that Ciy refused to co-operate on legal advice, citing the inadmissibility of the hacked emails as a source of evidence, plus (I suspect) they claimed Leterme was on a "fishing expedition" when asking for any and all emails associated with one of the leaked emails. I wouldn't be surprised if we appeal this, as CAS seem to be aaying that UEFA had grounds to investigate yet there wasn't enough in the emails to justify their conclusions. also the general legal issues around the admiisibility of the hacked emails and our refusal (on what we presumably were advised were sound legal grounds) to cooperate on the basis of those emails.

9. CAS rejected this, mainly on the grounds that the CAS process was(as Stefan said) 'de novo' and therefore effectively a fresh start.

10. As things turned out, CAS largely agreed, on the grounds that there was no issue with the sponsorship agreements, therefore we hadn't deceived UEFA or misreported our revenue. But they did see the failure ot cooperate as a serious breach of Article 56 and fined us accordingly, on the grounds that we could afford it and it needed to be a serious deterrent to future situations.

The admissibility of the hacked emails

CAS took a long look at this but eventually decided they were admissible. The Portuguese judge in charge of the Rui Pinto case had rules they shouldn't be used but CAS felt Swiss Law allowed their use in the public interest. They also advanced what, to me, seemed a rather strange justification that, anyway, they were already in the public domain and well publicised when UEFA picked them up. It also accepted that UEFA hadn't been involved in the theft of these therefore was an innocent party.

Now I'm no lawyer, but surely UEFA knew for certain that they were stolen? So the argument that they were in the "public domain" doesn't stand up in my view. If I unwittingly buy something that was stolen, it can be taken off me once it becomes apparent it's stolen, even though I acted in good faith. I'm entitled to my money back from the person who stole it but good luck with that in most cases. If however I buy stuff I know is stolen, then I'm plainly committing a criminal offence. So Der spiegel certainly knew they were in receipt of stolen goods and UEFA must have known they were using such stolen goods. Very strange.

Conclusions
Of the 10 grounds we appealed the AC's decision on, we lost on one major one (non-cooperation). We also lost on the arguments against admissibility of the emails and the time-barring/re-opening of the 2014 settlement agreement, but these rulings just led to CAS being able to examine the Etihad deal properly and finding it in order. The CFCB charged us with breaches of 7 separate FFP articles but only one, Article 56, stuck. And that one was not one that had been mooted as the start of the CFCB's investigation but only after it had started. So on every breach that the original investigation started from, we won.

It's also clear that this case isn't the death of FFP, as idiots like Ronay were proclaiming. It may even have been useful to UEFA in indicating where it needed to tighten things up, or clarify rules that were a bit too wide--ranging.

The other interesting thing in reading this is that we were obviosuly keen to get this resolved before the 2020/21 season but UEFA were equally, if not more keen to do this as well. If it was just a case of wanting to make sure their case stuck, they didn't have to do this. They could have waited, gsthered more evidence that we said would take too long to produce, and got what they wanted. Yet they were seemingly desperate to get this done as quickly as possible. To me, that suggests it was more important to some parties behind this to try to get us out of the CL as quickly as possible, losing the revenue from that which might have impacted us for years to come, than to actually prove their case beyond doubt (or allow us to prove our innocence). I ould be getting all paranoid but it seems they were more interested in landing a blow than anything else. and it failed miserably.

Very thorough and well balanced analysis, PB and we're all in your debt yet again. I think you draw several conclusions which need to be stressed because there are some real howlers doing the rounds, pushed by the usual suspects:-
since the relaxation of FFP
1. This is not the death of FFP. The issue at stake was not the break even regulation nor the arbitrary limitation of shareholder investment nor even the complete failure of FFP to deal with debt. Unfortunately in my opinion but UEFA is stuck with a series of regulations which it tried to use to crucify the club which appears to be the shining example of the success of FFP! Effectively City were allowed to invest for 3 years (instead of the 4 years allowed since 2015!) but returned to profitability within a year. The details are known to us all - free of debt, enormous revenue growth, unrivalled success on the pitch. Why were UEFA hell bent on pressing baseless charges against City in a clear attempt to destroy us?

They failed and as a result of Covid and the loss of revenue UEFA may have to think again about the real problems facing football - liabilities some clubs simply cannot meet, including many of the "richest" clubs in the world, in a Europe where it is unknown when crowds will be allowed back, how many will be able to afford the match ticket and how often, how many sponsors will still be there and what will they want to pay and why the great debtors should be allowed to inflate the transfer and wage markets yet again. UEFA's start has not been impressive since it amounts to no more than wait and see and hope for the best, but if Ceferin does believe that Manchester United's debt is a pressing problem but genuine owner investment is a real solution there is real hope. It may not be the death of FFPR but it may well be the death of THESE FFPR.

2. City may well appeal against the fine for non-cooperation. The fine does seem bizarre. If the emails entitled UEFA to ask if there was any basis at all to the claim of disguised owner investment they certainly could never constitute proof, especially since they were not validated. In the face of City's audited accounts surely any number of further emails could not have made the claim any stronger. So it is hard to see how City were found guilty (sorry!) of something they had not originally been charged with. This is the technicality - and City were found guilty (sorry!) on a technicality, not acquitted!

My personal opinion is that City would not cooperate for reasons they gave - the IC's inquiry as hopelessly biased, highly partial and would use any further emails to damn City with further inuendo. Probably a statement that the emails strengthened suspicions of cheating on a massive scale though not strong enough to enforce a ban ... It is up to the PL to decide on a course of action...

3. UEFA may not need pushing into action by clubs. As you and Football laws point out, the case UEFA made was so thin that the most common phrase in the CAS judgement was "no evidence". It is clear now that there never can be evidence of breaches that haven't been made but UEFA ploughed on ignoring what was bound to be crucial evidence - that of our accounts - to try and get a ban. As you say, "they were more interested in landing a blow than anything else" - a blow which could have weakened City terminally if it had opened us up to PL sanctions, which might have involved relegation to Division 2! There is no evidence, evidence which is not purely circumstantial, that UEFA were under pressure from any clubs at all. At least no evidence of pressure they should have had the balls to resist. Hopefully, UEFA will have realised that governance of European football by little more than vendetta is dead forever and a new working relationship with City will emerge.
 
Just spotted the headline in todays Sunday Times sports section.
BAYERN WARNING TO CITY OVER FFP RULES.
It is by Jonathan Northcroft and he writes CAS threw out the CFCB ruling on the basis of process and lack of evidence.

TBH I find Northcroft to be one of the worse. At least you know that the likes of Delaney and Harris hate us.
Northcroft pretends to be neutral but he's a snidey dick.
 
Not that popular. It was on one of the independent national radio stations to begin with but got taken off the air. There was much weeping from the presenters' buddies in the written media, at the time but to no avail. The show simply wasn't up to scratch. In fact, it only came to be vaguely well known because it was axed.

It's now a podcast. Today, it's far less even-handed and much more click-bait driven. It's legendary unevenness is regarded as a bit of a joke amongst Irish sports people.

You should hear them whenever they interview say, Paul O Connell or Liam Brady or any of the other undisputed greats of Irish sport... like a flutter of schoolgirls, gushing over a copy of Smash Hits.
The fact that Delaney is on there, spewing bile with his buddies, rather than anything more respected, speaks volumes about his standing in the grand scheme of things.

In addition to the presence of Delaney, I was stunned to wonder, (other that advertising purposes) wtf was the reason for the underpants stuck on the wall!

Utter knobs.
 
Coca Cola would pay 100s of millions, to drag the brand of Pepsi through the dirt, like these rival clubs have used UEFA to do with City.

It's a result that the ban didn't stick & perhaps a terrible shock to some of them, but the reputational damage inflicted by UEFA & the media mafia is still well worth it & achieved a decent number of their aims.

And the reporting afterwards has made sure of that.
 
Just finished the BFTB podcast and was talking about being puzzled about why UEFA were seemingly so keen to rush this appeal through, as I said in my earlier long post. I can understand why we were keen to resolve it before next season but less so as to why UEFA we're. My fellow podcaster got it on the nose when he pointed out that a certain team that seemed to be struggling for a top 4 place would be crippled financially if they didn't get in the CL and that 5th place would be good enough for that if we were banned next season. Then it all suddenly made perfect sense.

As fun as a United conspiracy theory is, I would have thought the obvious reason UEFA had to get this resolved before next season is that they would be doing £100m+ damage to the club, and if that ban was then dismissed out of hand because they had no evidence apart from 4 emails, they would be liable for an amount of money they don't have to lose.
 
Thanks to PB project river and others for their stupendous efforts. Inspired by them I have read and reread the CAS judgement. It is telling how often they refer to no credible evidence, lack of evidence, innuendo and other terms and phrases that in legal code damn UEFA’s case as woeful. I agree with previous posters that the non-cooperation at least enables UEFA to retain the merest shred if creditability. It puzzles me, as a retired lawyer, how UEFA’s lawyers allowed the matter to deteriorate to such a farce. The UEFA appeals committee members are not dummies and one can only conclude that this whole case was brought on a wing and a prayer/fishing expedition as a result of “client” pressure. A first year lawyer would realise that what UEFA had was nowhere near sufficient to justify proceeding in the way they did.
I will mow pop round to my neighbour who is well hard, and require him to produce evidence that he does not beat people up because he looks hard. That’s about the evidential value of the leaked emails.
Yes, there is an agenda and it stinks
 

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