The evidence before the tribunal on this was quite interesting. The PL said that Newcastle was the catalyst but not the reason for the introduction of the APT rules in substitution for the previous RPT rules. They said that the prime motivator was to stop another Portsmouth.
Personally, even though the tribunal accepted that evidence, I would call bullshit on that. The one thing the APT rules would not do is stop another Portsmouth, because Portsmouth went over the edge precisely as a result of the owner called in all those interest free loans. Whether the loans were interest bearing or not is not the issue: as long as the owner of a company can make loans to the company that are repayable on demand, you run the risk of another Portsmouth, and it is irrelevant that the company is in the business of professional football, manufacturing widgits or professional tiddlywinks. So "we wanted to avoid Portsmouth 2" just makes no sense to me.
By contrast, to my mind it is plain that there has for some time been some considerable angst amongst the usual suspects that the long-established RPT rules set out in IAS24 did not cover City and Etihad. This can be seen in the request that was made just after the Newcastle takeover that the tribunal refer to for a rehash of the rules "to include the widest possible definition of what is a related party transaction". It seems likely the 'real' target of the APT rules was both City and Newcastle - City because the existing rules didn't stop us, and Newcastle because they were worried that they would end up having even more muscle than City.
But none of that is to say that there is any direct connection between the 115 charges and the APT rules. They are separate issues relating to different rules. The real connection may be that the motivation for both the 115 charges and the introduction of the APT rules may come from the same place. We have debated the technical deficiencies and hurdles the PL will have to get over in the 115 charges at some length and I don't think anyone needs to re-cover that territory. I think it is quite plain that a degree of pressure has been brought to bear for those charges to be brought, and it wouldn't surprise me if the reason for that is because of the usual suspects' frustration that the rules under which all clubs were operating until 2021 didn't actually achieve what those usual suspects wanted them to achieve. We all know the PL will struggle to land the major charges - maybe famous last words, I know, but that has been the mood music from a variety of sources for the last 2 years - but why else would you bring these Hail Mary charges?
