PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[Rory Bluelow]

Ok thanks, but the club does have to provide supplementary financial information regularly: forecast information for one, and all the financial information needed annually to determine "true and fair" compliance with FFP which, of course, isn't in the annual accounts.

I think maybe my problem with all of this is that I can't imagine the PL would be stupid enough to set their charges at a level which makes it virtually impossible to get a favourable verdict, when I am pretty sure they could get the club on regulatory breaches. You could get any club on some regulatory breaches if you looked hard enough.

I am probably wrong. I often am :)

No need to reply. I don't want to burden all our legal experts.

I’m increasingly convinced this is simply about inflicting maximum reputational damage on the City “brand” to stunt its growth and devalue its achievements. I don’t think it’s about the PL achieving a verdict. It’s a clever strategy that ticks a number of boxes for the PL and its “most influential” clubs. The incoming Regulator should largely stop these behaviours in the future, but by then a lot of damage will have been inflicted. I would not be surprised to see these charges shelved at some point, and I can see City defending themselves vigorously until the issues are resolved - though I can’t realistically see them achieving any redress.

 

[hammocity]

Equity funding isn't illegal.

Filing dodgy accounts is.

I don’t have your level of knowledge but I thought we were accused of disguising sponsorships. My interpretation is as long as it’s not money laundering if the revenue came from our legitimate sponsors who have ties to Abu Dhabi it wouldn’t matter to HMRC who stumped the cash up.

Anyway, we all know why this is happening, I wish the Sheik had just propped up the Club with a continuous 1.6b soft loan as the Chavs did, then write the debt off, Leicester did it as well the other week for way more money than we are being challenged on, circa 200m in their case.

 

[Chris in London]

I don’t have your level of knowledge but I thought we were accused of disguising sponsorships. My interpretation is as long as it’s not money laundering if the revenue came from our legitimate sponsors who have ties to Abu Dhabi it wouldn’t matter to HMRC who stumped the cash up.

Anyway, we all know why this is happening, I wish the Sheik had just propped up the Club with a continuous 1.6b soft loan as the Chavs did, then write the debt off, Leicester did it as well the other week for way more money than we are being challenged on, circa 200m in their case.

It wouldn't matter to HMRC, but it would matter to the PL.

What is being alleged is that the accounts we submitted to both the PL and HMRC are dishonest, because they disguise what (the PL say) is in reality equity funding as sponsorship.

It is not the underlying actions which are said to be illegal, it's the cover up.

 

[diamondmonkey]

That's a question I was pondering myself last night. On the one hand, if Etihad paid us £50m, and we recorded £50m revenue, then that's clearly not fraudulent, regardless of the source of Etihad's funds. But if SM gave us all or most of the money, then we'd have presumably broken FFP rules.

This is the point (the source of Etihad funding) that Stefan and me didn't agree on. He argued it didn't matter where the money came from but my view was that it did, as far as FFP was concerned.

What do you think about the fact the charges start in 2009 before the first PL monitoring period of 2013 season. Surely the first 4 years of charges can’t be related to any FFP rules?

 

[Bez]

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that Manchester City did not disguise equity funding as sponsorship contributions, and therefore overturned the decision to ban the club from UEFA competitions.

So why the fuck are the PL pursuing this? Because they can and because they are being pressurised to do this by the 'Jealous Guys' running the so called history clubs.

If you can't beat em on the pitch, try and get your big bully mates to give em a kicking. In our case, they got UEFA and the PL to try and beat us up after school to teach us a lesson and clip our wings.

Bunch of bastards...

 

[Maly]

Right but the full value of Etihad / other stuff related to that sponsorship would have to go in the accounts and I assume we would have to declare the split as such and fair value test applied on the whole amount. It would pass fair value but we would be done for not declaring it

I don’t think fair value has anything to do with anything mate as Etihad isn’t a related party

 

[Chris in London]

What do you think about the fact the charges start in 2009 before the first PL monitoring period of 2013 season. Surely the first 4 years of charges can’t be related to any FFP rules?

It was always a requirement that we have to file accounts showing a true and fair view of the club's finances. The allegation is that we didn't do it even before FFP came in.

 

[Chris in London]

But if any alleged cover up only matters to the PL ( I.e. it is only an FFP matter) AND is not illegal then any such allegation is time barred prior to February 2017?

IF - and it is a huge if - we deliberately concealed (say) equity investment and dishonestly described it as sponsorship income, then the 6 year period only applies from the date that the PL had knowledge of our concealment. Given the investigation was opened very shortly after the Der Spiegel publication you can be fairly confident that is the relevant date. So to be time barred - IF we have done what is alleged - the charges would need to have been brought more than 6 years after the Der Spiegel publication.

They are well in time for what they allege. But if they cannot prove that we have filed dishonest accounts, the 6 year rule applies. That might for instance impact on the allegations about image rights.

 

[Jazzman]

It was always a requirement that we have to file accounts showing a true and fair view of the club's finances. The allegation is that we didn't do it even before FFP came in.

But why would we do that? What would the gain be?

 

[Corky]

But why would we do that? What would the gain be?

Ask Harry Bungs