Man City’s ‘irrefutable evidence’ disclosed as ‘sham’ and Sheikh Mansour key to doomed appeal
The ‘irrefutable evidence’ which Manchester City claim will see them exonerated in the Premier League’s FFP case against them has been unveiled for the first time.
The Premier League has confirmed that the independent panel found City guilty on all charges related to breaches of their financial regulations over a nine-year period.
It was found that City had arranged “sham” contracts with commercial partners to inflate revenues and reduce costs to the tune of over £900m.
In an unblinking message to club staff following the publishing of the verdict, chief executive Ferran Soriano hinted at what was to follow.
“The whole Premier League case against us is based on a single false accusation – that the owner’s personal money was somehow and secretly put into the club via some sponsors from Abu Dhabi,” he said.
“This is just not true. Irrefutable evidence has been provided to the Premier League commission that shows it could not happen and that it did not happen. This includes bank statements, money transfers, witnesses, and everything necessary to categorically demonstrate the money did not come from the owner.”
And now the Daily Mail has revealed the ‘irrefutable evidence’ of their innocence is in the form of a series of documents which City claim prove it was the government of Abu Dhabi, rather than the club’s owners, who funded the sponsorship deals.
The report adds:
‘Those with knowledge of the situation claim that City’s argument is that the monies were actually paid by the government, which owns the sponsors, rather than the club’s owners Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) – a private company owned by Sheikh Mansour – and as such, no rules were broken.’
The evidence comes in the form of bank statements and witness accounts that have already been seen by the independent commission and were dismissed during the initial process as they found the explanation was ‘concocted well after the event in an attempt to obscure and conceal the realities of the disguised funding scheme’.
A series of hacked emails sent by City executives effectively exposed this evidence for the proverbial it was, as officials discuss the flow of funds from ADUG through sponsors to City.
In a 2013 email, City’s then chief financial officer Jorge Chumillas asks Simon Pearce about the mechanisms of the deal with longstanding major sponsor Etihad Airways.
‘I need to understand the mechanism by which additional sponsorship flows through ADUG,’ he writes. ‘Is it ADUG Shareholder->ADUG->Etihad->MCFC? Or is it rather ADUG Shareholder->Etihad->MCFC?’
But City are adamant that it was the government and not the owners who were making up the £900m difference and are expected to claim that club executives were simply making mistakes in those emails. Whoops.
The panel is thought to have found that Sheikh Mansour – a member of the nation’s royal family and owner of City – was unaware of the so-called ‘sham’ deals and City are likely to claim in the appeal that him not being aware of nearly £1bn of his own money being used is implausible. His family is thought of as have a net worth of around $300bn.
The report also claims that the commission’s use of the word ‘sham’ is likely to be used by City in the appeal as ‘it is not simply a word for something which appears suspect, but is instead a legal term and that, in this case, it has been mis-used’.
Grasping at straws, one might suggest.
READ NEXT: Manchester City have just ‘been singled out’ – Man Utd, Barca and Milan should be sweating too