Arabic version: تفاصيل الحكم بشأن مانشستر سيتي تكشف نتائج تمويل الرعاية

According to BBC News, an independent commission’s ruling published on Tuesday found Manchester City guilty of all charges concerning serious breaches of financial rules and all but one charge relating to failure to co-operate with the investigation. The 40-page document uses the word “sham” eight times and examines the club’s financial arrangements from 2009-10 onwards.

The ruling says Abu Dhabi United Group, the club’s owners, knew from the 2009-10 season that Manchester City faced major overspending in pursuit of its ambitions. It found that a “disguised funding scheme” used sponsorship agreements with a base fee paid by sponsors and a tagged sum paid by the owners. The panel said the arrangement gave regulators and auditors a misleading impression of commercial revenue.

For the seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18, the ruling recorded total sponsorship income of £949.94m. It said £119.25m was made up of base fees, while £830.69m consisted of tagged sums paid by the owners. Manchester City denied the claims and said the Premier League had misunderstood the sponsorship agreements, but the panel rejected that explanation as untrue.

The document also examined Project Longbow, launched in 2012. While it said many strands were genuine and legitimate efforts to raise revenue and reduce operating losses, it found the Fordham Arrangement was “little more than a front”. The ruling said £24.5m was wrongly recorded as operating income and £49.414m was wrongly excluded from operating expenses.

It further described three cases in which remuneration was paid through third parties and recorded in consultancy agreements, involving £8.866m, £7.4m and £0.5m. The ruling said important factual witnesses gave evidence that was false in key respects, and concluded that the club failed to act with “utmost good faith” and breached duties of co-operation owed to the Premier League.