I've never bought this apocalyptic view that Stefan and others have taken. Had we made deliberate attempts to conceal or over-inflate income we had received, or knowingly misstated costs we'd incurred in order to show a false financial position, then there might well be an issue. But we haven't.
We've been accused of over-stating the Etihad & Etisalat sponsorships on the grounds that the former only provided a small part of the rated sponsorship, and the latter was paid by ADUG. But CAS put all that to bed comprehensively and unless the PL has incontrovertible evidence that wasn't available to CAS then there clearly been no fraud. And that's the biggest one financially. Had we only received £10m from Etihad but declared it as £60m, with a £50m debt to make up the difference, with that never being paid to us, then that could well be seen as fraudulent. But we correctly declared all revenue we received from Etihad and CAS established that this wasn't disguised owner investment.
Mancini's Al Jazira contract was fairly minuscule in comparison to other costs, at a time when we were reporting huge losses. So that is hardly an attempt to conduct a major fraud.
The image rights stuff was actually an attempt to boost revenue by selling IP to what was probably not a truly independent third party. It wasn't about keeping costs off the books but getting income on the books to try to avoid FFP penalties. UEFA were aware of this well before 2018, yet no action was taken, other than an agreement to end the scheme. Had it been considered fraudulent, then the PL (the licensor) would almost certainly have been informed and action taken. It's entirely possible that as that licensor, the PL were involved anyway. Yet nothing came of it.
For those reasons I highly doubt that any criminal action would follow even in the unlikey event we were found in breach of all three charges.
