The Premier League on Tuesday, September 29, confirmed that Manchester City has been found ‘guilty of all charges related to serious breaches’ of its financial rules – and that the club fiddled its books by around £900 million.
Last Friday, City were found guilty of a series of breaches over a nine-year, glittering period in its history, in a verdict which sent shockwaves through football and opened the door to huge penalties, including possible expulsion.
However, there has been no official comment on the findings of an independent panel who oversaw a hearing that concluded in December 2024.
That has now, dramatically changed. In a lengthy statement on Tuesday, the Premier League said City arranged ‘sham contracts (which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties) with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on ‘sham’ agreements with others, to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs’.
It also said the club falsely altered the financial picture at the Etihad to the tune of £900m.
The Premier League said the panel found that City had ‘filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators’. It added that the club was ‘significantly in breach of both the Premier League’s and UEFA’s spending limits’ during the time period in question, 2009-2018 when it won eight major trophies.
Deals with a number of sponsors were part of ‘a disguised funding scheme, whereby those companies were only required to pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees’, the Premier League add, saying that ‘the remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club’.
The panel also found further ‘sham’ arrangements, funded by ADUG, which allowed City to record lower operating expenses that it incurred, along with a ‘sham’ circular arrangement with Fordham, an entity that purchased the club’s players’ image rights, that was funded by ADUG’.
The Premier League said that revenues were inflated and costs reduced to the tune of £900m in an attempt to comply with spending rules.
The result was that the club ‘filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators’.
Had City reported accurately ‘it would have been in breach of both the League’s and UEFA’s spending limits by a very substantial amount’.
The panel also found that City committed multiple breaches of itd duties of co-operation and good faith in that it failed to assist the Premier League’s four-year investigation, triggered by the emergence of club emails obtained by a hacker. Indeed City had ‘made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the PL investigation.’
In response to the publication of the Core Decision on Tuesday, Man City released a statement claiming to have been ‘surprised and disappointed’ by the commission’s opinion.
“The Club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case,’ the club statement read.
“The Club will therefore be relentless, and where necessary proactive, in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums.
“The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements uncompleted. Manchester City FC will now pursue the appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.
“The Club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League Board and Executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence.
“The Club is obviously restricted in what it can say further until all future proceedings are complete.”
