English soccer club Manchester City has been found guilty of breaking financial rules, throwing the fate of one of the sport's most successful teams into jeopardy. An independent commission, charged to investigate 115 charges, found the soccer club arranged what it described as "sham" accounts with several commercial partners to hide an additional funding stream of around $1 billion.
The club has repeatedly topped English's soccer's top division, the Premier League, since being acquired by the private investment vehicle of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE deputy prime minister and a member of the royal family in Abu Dhabi, in 2008.
In its long-awaited ruling, the report said Manchester City arranged commercial deals that meant sponsors only had to "pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees", with the rest of the funds being put up by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd, the entity that owned the club.
The independent commission added that the soccer club intentionally hid the true source of its finances, and, had the accounts accurately been recorded, Manchester City would have been in breach of spending rules by a "very substantial amount". The Abu Dhabi-owned club has signaled it will appeal the decision and has until Friday to do so.
It said it was "disappointed and surprised" by the verdict and reiterated its innocence. It also vowed to be "relentless, and where necessary proactive, in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums." In a leaked video of Manchester City CEO Ferran Soriano addressing staff, he described the claims as a "conspiracy theory". Questions remain over what sanction the soccer club could face.
Speculation is raging over whether it could be relegated to the second tier of English soccer's pyramid system, the Championship, fined or be made to forfeit titles it won in the years the charges relate to. Why the Manchester City case has geopolitical stakes U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently took in an Everton game with fellow fan, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Simon Chadwick, professor of Afro-Eurasian sport at Emlyon Business School in France, suggested Burnham could come under pressure to help secure a solution to the City case. "The middle way suggests there's a deal to be struck, an outcome that falls somewhere between the Premier League's strict enforcement of its rules and the preservation of highly important politico-economic and diplomatic relations," he wrote