No. FFP sets a limit on what you can spend. You can produce perfectly accurate accounts yet fail FFP.
False accounting is knowingly producing accounts that don't reflect the true financial position of the reporting entity. So my former bosses at an insurance company deliberately excluded some large claims from the system, which led to them reporting a significantly better result than the real one. Three of them went to jail for 14 years between them for that. That had a lot to do with it being a quoted company, plus there was a clear trail showing that the three knew what they were doing, plus the CEO was also doing secret deals with reinsurers. While I understood their motives, it was fraud, pure and simple.
But accounting isn't always black and white. You can treat certain things in very different ways. That's why there are accounting standards. Stock is one of those. You can value stock in a number of ways, all of which will have an impact the bottom line. Any issues would also have to be material and a few quid either way won't be.
In 2011 and 2012, when that Mancini Al-Jazira contract for £1.75m a year was in force, we made losses of £195m and £95 respectively. Even if the PL commission were to decide we should have included that in our accounts, it makes fuck all difference overall. So there's no way, in my view, of that leading to criminal charges. It certainly made no difference to FFP, as we failed anyway.
With Fordham and the image rights, that was a grey area, I'd say. We needed additional revenue (as we thought) to avoid FFP sanctions and that was one of the things we did to generate that revenue. It made no difference as it happens, as UEFA deftly moved the goalposts, leaving us stranded. But I assume we had solid legal advice on that, and it was one of those scenarios where there was no breach of the letter of the law. UEFA were aware of it, as I've said, and didn't pursue it even though it was within the six-year limitation period.
