PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[GaudinoMotors]

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Aw bless em. Biggest day they've ever had.

 

[oldius]

The judgment reveals that on 9 March this year, nine other Premier League clubs wrote to Cas opposing any attempt by City to seek a “stay of execution” allowing them to play in Europe next season if the appeal hearing was delayed. The clubs were Arsenal, Burnley, Chelsea, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle, Tottenham and Wolves. But three weeks later City told Cas it had not requested a stay of execution. Cas agreed with City that the clubs’ claim was therefore “moot”.

 

[Robinho's Subbuteo]

It’s gathering signatures.

It might reach 42 signatures by tomorrow?

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To ensure 'no other teams' are unjustly prevented from winning titles.

Grow a back bone prick! Just say Manchester United or Liverpool instead of hiding behind 'other teams' to make yourself sound like you're speaking on behalf of the rest of the league.

 

[applecentral]

Not only is he stupid, not only does he break no new stories as a reporter nor any new ground as an analyst, but he’s also smug, pedantic, obfuscatory, argumentative, petty, a coward, and has a face I’d happily like to see meet the Black & Decker wood sander in my garage.

IMO he IS the worst.

Your not keen on him are you?

 

[KS55]

So if I say something slanderous, and someone records me on their phone before uploading it to YouTube, it becomes libellous?

It might depend on whether you knew you were being recorded. But if you post your slanderous words to a utube vid, it is libel. Permanence is the difference. Broadcasts are permanent because they can be repeated ad infinitum.

 

[petrusha]

Just re-read the CAS award again, and found this interesting bit:

"Leaked e-mail number 1 was also sent 10 years ago and 2 years before the implementation of the CLFFPR. So, even if true, there would have been nothing wrong with channeling equity funding through sponsors."

Forgive me for rattling this cage all the time, but doesn't this support my view that, even if the allegations are found to be true, there is no accounting "fraud" as, if there was "nothing wrong" with the accounting treatment before FFP, then, in accounting terms, there is also nothing wrong with the accounting treatment after FFP? Accounting treatments don't change just because UEFA/ the PL implement some new regulations. So it's just a regulatory issue, not a fraudulent accounts issue?

I am still having trouble getting my head around this fraud/ misleading the auditors thing if I am being honest (as you can probably tell!)

No, it doesn't. First, when they say "there would have been nothing wrong", they're talking specifically about under UEFA rules. The accounts still wouldn't be "true and fair", as they'd have been disguising owner funding as income, which gives a misleading impression of the bottom line in terms of a company's profitability. But let's ignore that and focus on the UEFA charges for the period when FFP was in force.

As per para 206 of the CAS award, what we were accused of doing once FFP was in force amounted to "dishonest concealment" of equity funding as sponsorship. That means we lied to UEFA by providing false accounting records so that, over an extended period, around £50 million per annum of the owner's funds could be booked as income, meaning we could spend the funds within the confines of FFP in a way we couldn't have

Previously, UEFA wouldn't have cared about this, so we wouldn't have had to discuss the sources of our sponsorship income with them and there'd have been no need to lie to them. The accusation of dishonesty is key.

With regard to the offence of false accounting under section 17 of the Theft Act 1968, by virtue of section 17(1)(b), a person "shall, on conviction on indictment, be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years" if that person "dishonestly, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another" when he "in furnishing information for any purpose produces or makes use of any account, or any such record or document as aforesaid, which to his knowledge is or may be misleading, false or deceptive in a material particular".

That, in effect, is exactly what UEFA accused us of doing. The CAS rejected it, but the allegation was that the employees and officers of MCFC with whom they were dealing in the context of our FFP issues had committed conduct that happens to fall squarely within the above definition.

If the CAS had found MCFC guilty, the relevant officers of MCFC;

1. would have had to have acted dishonestly (they're sophisticated businesspeople who fully understood UEFA's rules);
2. would certainly have been acting with a view to gain ... for another (the other being the club, and such gain taking the form of allowing the club to spend £200 million that otherwise wouldn't have counted as income for FFP purposes, as referred to in para 206 of the CAS Award); and
3. would have used various sets of accounts and other documents that were "misleading, false or deceptive" because they'd have provided documents including but not limited to our annual accounts that duped UEFA into thinking we had an extra £50 million available to us annually while still meeting the requirements of FFP.

We should also remember that the documents referred to in the above point 3 don't only cover annual accounts. Under section 17(1)(a) of the 1968, the scope of the offence extends to "any account or any record or document made or required for any accounting purpose", which would cover other submissions to UEFA in the context of FFP and licensing that relied on information falsely concealing the source of equity funding.

As I noted previously, section 17 of the 1968 Act is set out in a chapter of that Act that's headed 'Fraud and blackmail' (see the Table of Contents). This means that the offences in the relevant chapter fall within the scope of either fraud or blackmail. The offence under section 17 clearly bears no relationship to blackmail, but is underpinned by the idea of dishonesty that's also inherent to fraud and related offences.

Again I note that, as was discussed extensively in the context of the CAS proceedings, a guilty verdict wouldn't have necessarily (and some argue would certainly not have) resulted in a prosecution of MCFC personnel for false accounting. I merely note that the accusations were an exact match to the body of the offence.

It's therefore entirely proper to characterise UEFA's allegations against us as based on conduct that's tantamount to fraud. We don't yet know about the PL, but if (as seems likely based on the available evidence so far) they're making similar accusations based on our disguising equity funding as sponsorship, then they're doing the same thing.

Make no mistake, the corollary of UEFA's allegations wasn't just that we were guilty of some minor accounting breaches. The claimed concerted actions over a protracted period with the aim of deceiving them make it much, much more serious than that.

I was working to a deadline this morning, which I've now missed, so I really have to stop here. But I hope it's clear that the alleged dishonesty is the key here.

 

[remember arthur mann]

Glad it amused you. I've shot .44 and .458 weapons and they were bad enough being at the right end.

The point I was making was that there seem to be a lot of charges but there's probably only two, maybe three, actual substantive ones. And I think they're a bit weak. If the PL can't land those substantive charges then the rest, bar maybe the non-cooperation ones, fall.

I think we need a name change @Prestwich_Blue.

PB is Dirty Harry.

PB is .....

 

[Manchester_lalala]

I agree it's so unlike him....

Manchester City fans left unhappy by curse of constantly winning trophies | Jonathan Wilson

Manchester City are showing that, when a club ceases to be that hapless entity that drew you in, its success is not as much fun as everybody assumes

www.theguardian.com

The world would be a better place without football journalists. Just look at the state of that article.

 

[r.soleofsalford]

I do, but that’d be too quick.

I have to admire a man who thinks things through.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

It’s gathering signatures.

It might reach 42 signatures by tomorrow?

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Fine by me as long as if I accuse the originator of the petition of being a sex offender he's happy to live on the nonce wing at strange ways until there's time to clear him.