Is there not a general legal precedent around what is 'admisable' as evidence.
Stolen emails would not be admissible. Documents provided via disclosure would be. If incriminating emails turn up in a basic search then we have a case to answer. But then why are the club so confident - they know what was handed over.
I would be extremely surprised if anyone at the club is "confident" when PL is doing everything they can to take the club down. But thats obviously what they have to say in public since anything else would be considered as admitting guilt in the trial by media. As everyone knows about laws and rules, what one consider to be OK another one can look at and find something wrong with, especially when they are determined to find something wrong at all costs, disregarding everything that tells them something different from what they want to hear and pinpointing things out of context as "wrong" or suspicious". The most honest and well run business in the world could and would get accused of numerous charges if the one "investigating" them is doing everything they can to "find" something wrong.
I myself had my first company (wrongfully) convicted of tax evasion 10 years ago, had to pay approximately £1m to HMRC (or the Swedish equivalence). My offense? I had bought items from another company and paid them what the items cost, including VAT. The company I bought the items from had no debt, no remarks from any creditors or any government agencies, at the time I bought items from them (I checked multiple times and could prove that I had). 3 years later it turns out the other company had not declared their incoming VAT that I had paid them 3 years earlier (I had at this time no dealings with them anymore). And since they had not paid them, apparently I was at fault, accused to have committed tax fraud. I had to pay it, since I for some reason should have known this company with no known remarks whatsoever would suddenly commit fraud and I was considered to knowingly helping them to do so. The fact that I hade no motive or never failed to pay anything myself didnt matter. It ended up with me having to pay "back" (with other words, pay all VAT from one year twice, the first time I did it to the one that later committed fraud, then I had to pay the same amount again to the HMRC) all the tax this other fraudster had stole, probably just because they could never get any money out of them. This despite my company itself had not earned anything on the other company's tax fraud. After that, I lost all faith in authorities and their willingness to make an "unbiased investigation". Standard honest bookkeeping that I still use in all my businesses today was suddenly deemed "suspicious", and it was not a case of them having to prove they were right, it was a matter of me (and my very expensive law firm) having to prove every single one of the 30+ vague accusations were without a doubt wrong, which is more or less an impossible task. Apparently I should have known this other company was "suspicious" and would commit fraud, despite no one else, including government agencies, knew at the time. HMRC almost ruined my business, the livelihood for me and my at the time 6 employees for a crime someone else committed, simply because they could, and wanted the money another company had stolen "back". My business survived (thank good) thanks to a few unexpectedly good months of revenue that year, but I had to let half of my staff go.
This is of course very out of topic, and my at the time small business is of course in no way comparable to Man City. But from my perspective its clear that it doesnt always matter if you are at fault or not when authorities is coming after you. I have worked with a lot of businesses, big and small over the years and everyone fears that "big brother" will suddenly take aim at them. They know that it doesnt really matter if they run a honest business and try to do everything right, if "big brother" is determined to find something wrong with them, they will. It can be an accounting error (humans do errors, even the best ones), a practice that was considered standard at the time but wrong now, or whatever. Especially when they use the tactic to throw so many accusations at you that the mindset of them who will judge you becomes "its so much, we cant just say not guilty on all of them", which is of course the whole idea. Not to mention when the guys "judging" Citys case is fans from our rivals with a predetermined mindset of that these Arabs with their oil money have taken our trophies from us and now its time for revenge. City obviously have unmatched resources to face these claims, but when the ones judging you dont really care about the facts or your point of view, maybe it doesnt matter. Mindsets like "we have not done anything wrong so we have nothing to worry about" may work in fiction, but thats not how it works in real life.
