The core allegation was that Etihad only directly contributed £8m, while the rest came from somewhere else. UEFA claimed it was from ADUG, therefore should be treated as equity investment. City & Etihad denied that, and presented evidence at CAS that this additional money had come from central Abu Dhabi funds, for marketing purposes, which CAS accepted as the truth.
Anyone who's followed my postings on here will hopefully confirm that I already knew that, via a document that was in the public domain via a court in New York that was hearing a case under the 'Open Skies Agreement'. This was a presentation which was prepared for Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and explicitly stated that the Etihad sponsorship was being paid by the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. That's why I was quite confident we would beat UEFA at CAS, and that we'll beat the main substantive PL charge.
As to why varying amounts were paid under the Etihad contract, there was no explanation of that but my view (which was slightly supported by the leaked emails) was that we could call off what we wanted, when we wanted it, subject to the overall terms of the contract. I recall Nick Harris getting all giddy and saying that the Etihad contract was for far more than we said it was, due to the amounts paid in 2013, 2014 and 2016. He added those up and divided by 3, but there was nothing stated for 2015. So the assumption must be that either we received no cash from Etihad or relatively little, having called off additional cash in the previous years.
If Etihad were paying us £600m over 10 years, that doesn't have to mean they'll pay us £60m each and every year. We would probably declare £60m a year in the accounts but how the actual cash flows are structured is completely irrelevant.