mobile app bar

Manchester City could face Champions League ban as new leaks exposes the club

Sudarshan Venkatesan
Published

Manchester City could face Champions League ban as new leaks expose the club. 

Manchester City, who are currently in the Round of 16 Stage in the Champions League could be handed out a participation ban in this particular competition. German publication Der Spiegel provides more details of how they allegedly tried to exploit the UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules.

Besides this case, the Citizens will themselves face an enquiry from the FA, after misleading the English Football governing body over the third-party ownership of a player, Bruno Zuculini.

But, the serious outcome could come from the UEFA who are on the verge of hitting Manchester City with a Champions League ban, which would directly affect the club as the direct funding from the owner Sheik Mansour is not allowed under the European Football Federation rules.

The English outfit are also being enquired for the football leaks which started to kick off last November. The leaks added that the UEFA are investing Manchester City as the emails suggested that they used direct funding from the Abu Dhabi group, the investment funded by the owner Sheik Mansour to supplement sponsorship deals.

UEFA have placed a rule over the amount of money the owner can directly inject into the club, especially after the inflation.

Chairman and Chief Investigator of UEFA Club Financial Control Body, Yves Leterme said that City could face the heaviest punishment if the alleged details are proven true. The club could possibly be bidding adieu to the Champions League, he added.

In the recent leaks, City have made it appear that their incomes have come through their sponsorship deals rather than from the owner himself.

In one email dated April 2010 City director Simon Pearce is writing to an executive of City’s sponsors, Aabar, an Abu Dhabi investment firm. Pearce wrote: “As we discussed the annual direct obligation for Aabar is £3 million. The remaining £12m required will come from His Highness.”

An internal document seems to have indicated that’s up to 2012 the supplement to Abu Dhabi Partnership deals amounted up to 149.2 million.

That above-mentioned amount is indicating the amount of funding the Abu Dhabi Group have given to the Sponsors. However, the money should directly come from the sponsors, so UEFA had come to the conclusion that it was genuine sponsorship money. The November emails leaked that the bank details of Abu Dhabi Group funding their sponsors which in turn will be directed towards the club.

Graham Wallace, who was then Manchester City’s Chief Executive Officer was writing in a mail and the necessity of it.

Referring to the ‘direct equity funding,’ which is Sheik Mansour’s funding of the clubs, he wrote: “What we therefore need is that monies we are attributing to [City’s sponsors] Etisalat, ADTA, Aabar and Etihad … are physically remitted to us by those businesses … to avoid any related party influence/control considerations.”

Further emails between Chief Financial Officer Jorge Chummillas and Pearce speak about the additional funding through the sponsorship and the details of it.

In January 2013, Abu Dhabi Group paid 57 million pounds as sponsorship fees which was traced by the football leaks. These appear to breach UEFA’s financial rules.

A year later, Manchester City had promised that they would abide by the rules for some breaches which occurred earlier. However, the European governing body were not aware of the sponsorship money.

A fresh probe could appear as FA have decided to look into the case of Zucilini, who was also partly owned by a company named MPI.

However, that is not against the rules. But, when FA asked who was behind MPI, City did not enclose that 30 million euros injection was organized by Manchester City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano.

City are already facing a FA investigation into a £200,000 payment to the agent of Jadon Sancho when he transferred to the club at the age of 14.

City issued a statement on Saturday night saying: “We will not be providing any comment on out-of-context materials purported to have been hacked or stolen from City Football Group and City personnel and associated people. The attempt to damage the club’s reputation is clear.”

About the author

Share this article