PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

wolviedinho said:
I have no sympathy for the league.

All this could have been avoided if they had just accepted the CAS decision.

Fight to the bitter end it seems.

Hopefully we know more in 3 months.

Gonna feel like an eternity.
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It’s achieved part of its task,smear City and paint them as cheats regardless,this whole sham is at the bequest of those running the premier league the cartel..
 
BamberBridgeBlue said:
You mean breached some rules that didn’t exist a decade or so back? Why City fans persist in using these legal terms spouted by the press is beyond me. We’re not in Magistrates or Crown Court.

For the most serious breaches, the implications are tantamount to fraud. I’m just imagining the Police or other enforcement bodies hanging back whilst the crack investigation team at The Premier League do their thang.

I’ll worry when uniformed officers are pictured seizing computers at The Etihad stadium, Etihad Airways, Etisalat and Bobby Manc’s house.

The Premier League have produced a great product but when it comes to setting rules, their legality and enforcing them at the behest of their perceived cash cow clubs, they’re a joke.

That’s why I’m with Tolmie’s assertions.
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This for me is the key thing. What city are accused of is vast fraud/falsification of accounts, and if the 'evidence' met the threshold of legal proof then this would be a police/Interpol/HMRC and CPS matter. I'd have thought PL hearings would have to wait for the outcome of that to avoid prejudicing the legal process. So, I suppose the good news is the 115 are bollocks in legal terms, the worse news is that the PL as a private club are judge, jury and executioner and what counts as sufficient 'proof' may in that case be much less.
 
petrusha said:
First, I'd be very disappointed if City turn out actually to have done what's alleged, at least as regards any offence that, if made out, would be serious enough to entail a potential points deduction. I think it should have been easy enough for the club's execs to operate within the rules and still achieve their objectives.

Second, the PL will surely have more than the emails given the length of their investigation as well as the powers they had to demand documents and information. We have to assume they'll have uncovered during that process further pieces of evidence that they regard as bolstering the case against the club.
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It IS possible, that the club were operating within the rules, or were and still are convinced that is what they were doing. And that it is down to a matter of interpretation of detail rather than deliberate and conscious deceit as is alleged.

In the same way that for example the PL might not have set out to deliberately introduce unlawful ATP regulations, and thought, with legal advice that they had, that these were ok.

And that there is a version in which both of what you say above coexist.
 
Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
This for me is the key thing. What city are accused of is vast fraud/falsification of accounts, and if the 'evidence' met the threshold of legal proof then this would be a police/Interpol/HMRC and CPS matter. I'd have thought PL hearings would have to wait for the outcome of that to avoid prejudicing the legal process. So, I suppose the good news is the 115 are bollocks in legal terms, the worse news is that the PL as a private club are judge, jury and executioner and what counts as sufficient 'proof' may in that case be much less.
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But there is no evidence in the public domain to even start a criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution. If the club has done what is alleged and the PL can prove it in front of the panel, then that is the time for consideration of criminal proceedings, if any.

And the PL may well be the prosecution but they aren't judge, jury or executioner. The panel will have impeccable credentials, akin to those at the APT tribunal I would imagine, and will certainly be impartial. You will see :)
 
Coatigan said:
It IS possible, that the club were operating within the rules, or were and still are convinced that is what they were doing. And that it is down to a matter of interpretation of detail rather than deliberate and conscious deceit as is alleged.

In the same way that for example the PL might not have set out to deliberately introduce unlawful ATP regulations, and thought, with legal advice that they had, that these were ok.

And that there is a version in which both of what you say above coexist.
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I'd note that the most serious of the 'charges', which are the ones relating to the inflation of sponsorships, are worded so that the accusations specifically refer to the club acting in bad faith. That in effect means that we deliberately undertook wrongful actions in full knowledge of what we were doing.

And then there's the fact that certain of the other matters are prima facie time-barred under the Limitation Act 1980 (Mancini's contract, image rights payments and possibly the Etihad and Aabar sponsorships). The only way those matters aren't time-barred is if the PL can prove fraud and/or deliberate concealment.

Make no mistake, this is emphatically NOT just a matter of "interpretation of detail". We're being accused of systematically producing false accounts for a period of almost a decade to disguise the true nature of payments that were to the club's benefit but allegedly contravened the rules.

Given the nature of the allegations we face, it's not remotely credible or conceivable that City's execs could possibly have been acting in the manner they purportedly were under the PL's version of events while thinking they were remaining within the rules. These are highly experienced business people with impressive track records, and they know fraudulent actions when they see them.

As has been regularly reported with great glee in the media, if the PL lands any of the most serious charges, the result will be a points deduction or even expulsion. That wouldn't be the case if this were just a dust-up over the nuances of interpreting which accounting treatment should be applied to certain business operations.

For it as the regulator to decide to prosecute 'charges' that entail the club having acted fraudulently in the way it's accused of doing, one would reasonably expect the PL to have evidence that give it a realistic prospect of reaching the necessary standard of proof. City, on he other hand, claim to have "irrefutable* evidence" of the club's innocence.

There might be a way that the two above positions could coexist. However, it seems to me to be so fanciful and to have such a vanishingly small chance of being true that IMO serious commentary should disregard it.

* - I dislike the word "irrefutable", which the club has chosen to use in various public statements. There's almost no evidence whatsoever that's really open to no question at all. However, I accept that we want to come across as bullish, and in any case the same points apply if we were to replace it with something like "compelling" or even to dial that down and say "strong".
 
petrusha said:
* - I dislike the word "irrefutable", which the club has chosen to use in various public statements. There's almost no evidence whatsoever that's really open to no question at all. However, I accept that we want to come across as bullish, and in any case the same points apply if we were to replace it with something like "compelling" or even to dial that down and say "strong".
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How about "unassailable"? (Better than 'incontrovertible' anyway :-)
 
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