PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[waspish]

I think it’s a different point. United convinced the PL as to £40m of Covid costs via an audited statement. Whilst i struggle to see how they got £40m, I don’t think it’s case of hiding things - it’s a case of convincing the PL and making specific representations. It will have reconciled to their audited numbers as it was extracted from them.

Agree with this they were smarter to show why they should get 40m covid money am sure if other clubs but the effort in they did they would of got a lot more!

 

[M18CTID]

That's actually quite interesting, although I doubt Herbert will understand why.

Clearly some of it is just simple journalistic and uninformed nonsense but, assuming he actually did hear that the panel looked at the mind-boggling complexity of the AD sponsorships (which isn't news, btw, as it was already exposed in the APT case, for Etihad at least) and if his source is using that as an indication that City may have been using complex contracts to get around FFP (rather than, say, oh I don't know, the much more serious allegation that Mansour paid the sponsorship himself) then that may be an indication that the PL's allegations over funding sponsorships failed, and their attention was instead drawn to the related party nature of the deals and their fair value as we discussed a while ago.

That is an important shift in tone imho from very serious legal fraud issues to less serious and more esoteric accounting issues and is a good one for people looking for "signs".

Of course, it may be that I, Herbert or both are all talking just plain bollocks, but I reckon this may be the first indication that the PL actually struggled with its more serious allegations as we always thought they would.

This is a very good point. I just don’t see how someone like Herbert would get the inside track on that.

 

[halfcenturyup]

I tend to think there is a good chance Herbert’s piece is based on the most throwaway of comment that someone heard third hand via a Chinese whisper.

PS I don’t know what you mean re the PLs Statement of Fact. There may be areas of Common Ground but the related party position
in fact is that Etihad and Etisalat are not RPs so it could not included in any statement of fact except City’s. If you are right it is an issue not common ground.

Re your PS, I suppose that is the risk of me using terminology when I don't know what it means. Lesson learned. Again :)

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

I tend to think there is a good chance Herbert’s piece is based on the most throwaway of comment that someone heard third hand via a Chinese whisper.

Maybe he heard it from a City-supporting journalist at Anfield.

 

[JewelZee]

Of course, I agree with all that, and I am not at all worried by it.

But my question isn't whether they will succeed in questioning the ownership structure / RPT classification, but whether they are questioning these things in the 115 case.

I think it's more than likely they are.

I read through paragraphs 180 to 189 of the APT judgment again just now and I find it hard to conclude that the redacted part of paragraph 186 is anything other than a description of allegations in the 115 case concerning the abuse of RPTs as justification for the need for APTs. Imho, it wouldn't be there if it wasn't.

And RPTs are specifically referred to in the PL statement on the allegations, after all.

But I recognise I am the only one here who thinks that. And I could easily be wrong. No problem. We will see soon enough, I suppose.

Just a question, why then did the Prem wait for the Saudi takeover of Newcastle to implement the new APT rules? They may well be raising questions in the 115 as you say but for me that would be more of what I call retroactive bullshit.

 

[Damocles]

Maybe he heard it from a City-supporting journalist at Anfield.

Probably a club chairman

 

[Paladin]

Nor does it mean that, as he seems to suggest, there must therefore be something wrong with them. Obviously, as we've done to death on here, if they're set up with a view to creating a fraudulent disguise for shareholder investment by portraying it as sponsorship income, then THAT would constitute (among other things) rule breaches along the lines of the accusations against City.

Otherwise, the arrangements presumably amount, in the final analysis, to: individuals at City with connections to the Abu Dhabi royals or government apparatus allowing AD publicly owned sponsors preferential payment delays by making funds available to MCFC pending reimbursement; AD public body shareholders of such companies providing the latter with funding to meet the sponsorships obligations; or a combination of the above.

OK, fine, but how does this constitute, as the ‘charge’ references, a failure to provide "in the utmost good faith ... accurate financial information that gives a true and fair view of the club’s financial position, in particular with respect to its revenue (including sponsorship revenue), its related parties and its operating costs". Maybe there's an argument it does, and the PL obviously thinks so. It's far from evident based on the information in the public domain, though, and the explanations in the preceding paragraph are IMO prima facie far more persuasive.

As pithily stated in the post I've quoted, this field isn't an area of strength for Herbert, a lamentable illiterate in serious legal and financial matters He proclaims himself a friend as well as a former colleague of Nick Harris, on whose judgement here he's in all probability relying. Yet while Harris is more knowledgeable than Herbert on these issues, the former’s proficiency is still grievously deficient itself and, moreover, is tainted by a stench rather than a whiff of manifest bias.

There are all kinds of issues potentially at play here, none of which either Herbert or even Harris is even close to capable of analysing in competent or credible fashion (as opposed to Nick’s detailed but myopic rehashes of the ‘prosecution’ case). I could speculate what the issues at hand might possibly be, but I'm really not sure that it serves any purpose. Nonetheless, in this monster of a thread they've all had an airing at some point anyway.

That said, unless City have been improbably and monumentally stupid in the drawing up and execution of the arrangements, I'd contend that they're really not especially likely to be the subject matter of the kind of fraud or deliberate concealment that would allow the statutory time-bar to be lifted for issues before season 2016/17. And it's hard to see how the accounts didn't give a "true and fair" view thereafter.

The latter argument seems to me to apply even if one accepts the wholly contentious premise that AD sponsors should have been declared as "related parties", at least as long as the fees under the relevant contracts were broadly at market value. No doubt our accounting brethren will pull me up on this one if I have it wrong.

TL, DR. Another year, another vacuous, cheerleading piece of simplistic clickbait bullshit from Herbert, coming close to straying over the border with outright mendacity if it doesn't actually do so. No surprises there. Still, I have to give the guy credit for one thing, namely his sheer chutzpah in being that grotesquely ugly yet being prepared even so to appear in public without a bag over his head. He has looks and intellectual ability on the same level.

Superb takedown of Herbert. Post of the year IMO.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Just a question, why then did the Prem wait for the Saudi takeover of Newcastle to implement the new APT rules? They may well be raising questions in the 115 as you say but for me that would be more of what I call retroactive bullshit.

Just a coincidence. After all, they said they'd been thinking about them for years (even though there was nothing documented to show that). And it was coincidence that someone happened to mention Middle Eastern owners in an email, when they were really referring to any foreign owners with good connections.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Probably a club chairman

Or one of the OSC branches.

 

[halfcenturyup]

You're not the only one. I certainly agree with you that there's a common thread between the APT case we brought, and some of the charges brought by the PL, and that is related parties. In fact the PL charges specifically mention related parties as part of the first group of charges don't they?

I initially dismissed any link between the two but the published verdict from the APT case changed my mind. It was clear that certain clubs had an issue over this. But, as I said, even in the unlikely event Etihad was deemed by the IC to be a related party, that still doesn't make their sponsorship equity investment.

Correct, but it means the PL can open up FMV again under FFP (FSG's losing bid argument since 2009).

I also wondered if the change in holding company (and change in legal form) from ADUG to Newton in the middle of the investigation was a way of making it easier to prove beneficial owner, or more difficult to disprove it. Coincidental timing. Maybe nothing.