The "whistleblower" appears to be a reference to Stefan himself. Interestingly, in his tweets Harris both refers to 'multiple sources' at City and refers to his 'whistleblower' in the singular. So Harris seems to be in some confusion himself as to what a whistleblower is and just how many of them he is in contact with.
On the Pearce email, Stefan made the point in the podcast that Simon Pearce will have to answer for his email in the light of what he told CAS (and vice versa) and he will either explain it to the tribunal's satisfaction or he won't.
The wider point Stefan also made, and in my view the more telling one, is that these cases don't tend to turn on a single email. What is necessary is for the tribunal to make up its mind on the basis of the overall weight of evidence. In this case, for instance, even if the email points in one direction, the fact that both City's audited accounts and - crucially - Etihad's audited accounts record the full sponsorship amount (which is precisely, as I understand it, what both sets of accounts show and both accounts are consistent with each other) that might be said to have far more weight. This is because the conclusion that both sets of accounts are knowingly false requires high-level collusion between two global companies, and of course the government of Abu Dhabi, is not something you would usually see being established on flimsy evidence.
Besides, it seems to me that the email supports City's case as much as anything else. There is a contract (somewhere) signed on behalf of both companies saying 'Etihad will pay City £X and City will provide Y advertising services in return." The email seems to relate purely to the source of those funds, but it does not detract from the essential point that the contractual liability to pay City is Etihad's, not that of the AD government. Assuming that to be a genuine contract, the PL's case (on this issue) ends at that point. It is irrelevant that Etihad find the sums to pay that from their own reserves, from a rights issue, from loans from the directors or from a hand out from the Abu Dhabi government. They have entered into a legally binding contractual obligation to pay X in return for Y and they could have been sued if they had refused to perform their obligations under that contract.
That is precisely what City's accounts show, and (as I understand it) it is precisely that which the PL have to show was untrue, and known to be untrue when City signed off their accounts.
Good luck with that, guys.
