115 fraud/ Consipiracy charges.

[Vickki]

I was talking with my lawyers on Friday, and one of them follows City. He asked me about the 115 charges City are facing. His main question was " if City are alleged to have used fraudulent and conspiracy to gain an advantage then why are City not in Crown Court as these allegations are criminal." Steffan Borson said the same thing by saying that the PL independent panel is the wrong forum to try this case.  Further, he stated that if cleared City should go after the PL and ruin them.
What do you all think?
Victoria ❤️

[KunDB]

God only knows what a tribunal panel appointed by the PL will decide. We won at CAS and they cleared our name, this is a rerun, a second bite of the cherry, but it is worth remembering at CAS we won 2 judges to 1. That one believed we were guilty of some of the core charges.

My understanding is that as it is a tribunal agreed upon by all PL clubs as the appropriate mechanism their can be no judicial appeal on the outcome if it goes against us.

[Vickki]

We should be in a court of law, and not a tribunal. Those are criminal charges we are facing. Also if found guilty we can appeal whereas withe tribunal we cannot. I would take it court, there is no independent tribunal ever, thay are always for the employer (pl).

[gavin]

Yeh, it is essentially fraud that we are accused of. Maybe criminal charges could follow if found guilty. But CAS already said that the evidence just wasn't there to support that charge on the years that they adjudicated on. If they had bombshell new evidence then I think that we'd have heard by now.

[Vickki]

Would that double jeopardy?

[gavin]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/68074110

Manchester City - losses of 59m euros (£51m) and Bayern Munich - losses of 61m euros (£52m) - "have the best balances among the most competitive teams" the report said.

This just illustrates the folly of all these rules. What is the problem with investing in your club to then become the most competitive and well managed club in the world? They are punishing wise and successful investment along with careless and problematic spending. Not to mention, rewarding those who bleed their own clubs dry.

[Swiss]

Would that double jeopardy?

Doubt they have that law at a workplace tribunal.

Also, in UK law, you can apply to have an acquittal quashed if compelling evidence comes to light.

[reddishblue]

The thing about FFP and subsequent equivalents they do not take into account any debt but they do try and prevent investment.

I wonder why that is? NOT.

[Stephen Paul]

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/qEfMHjeuk13HXsmG/?mibextid=jmPrMh

[Swiss]

Links not working for me Stevie

[Kilkenny Blue]

The PL are onto a hiding here.  The cosy cartel is going to get a shake up and a grilling as to why some clubs seem to get away with everything

[Kilkenny Blue]

Came across this earlier. It's a bit of a read but some good points:

Fact checking claims about City's FFP charges
Since the Premier League first laid charges, most already reached a verdict that 'City are obviously guilty'. The news quieted a bit because Arsenal were leading the PL, but the closer City comes to the title the more the discussion rises again.

What's more, like a game of broken telephone, it seems like the claims get wilder with every person that repeats them. And everything that's thrown in -- from FFP violations to bribery to illegal offshore payments--seems to stick.

Therefore, I wrote this summary addressing claims I commonly read. I don't work in law or finance, so I've drawn from the following sources:

Stephan Borson, who is a lawyer that runs the City Spaces and in the past gave a pretty impartial summary of the PL case. For those of you who are lawyers, he's also written an extremely detailed 2-part review of the documents of the UEFA case, here is part 1 and part 2.

u/ LessBrain, who is probably the top football finance expert on reddit, and has previously written an accessible summary of the UEFA case that gives context to this post.

Matt Slater and Sam Lee, from their Athletic article

Swiss Ramble, a football finances blogger.

Deloitte Football Money League.

Disclaimer: This post assumes familiarity with the UEFA case, e.g. have read the summary written by LessBrain. Of course I support the PL investigation to reveal the truth. However even if the club is cleared by the PL commission (which based on my understanding, I think we can reasonably expect to happen) I don't think many outside of maybe this subreddit will care. I was reading comments on the UEFA case in r soccer from 3 years ago and was really surprised because it seemed most fans were so levelheaded. But the threads describing the recent PL charges were overwhelmingly one sided.

The facts of the case is extremely easy to misinterpret even by City fans. And there's just not enough City fans to control the narrative, especially among content creators. This means the PR damage from first the UEFA charges, and now this seems basically irreversible. Some beliefs about the club are so widely and confidently propagated that I actually doubt whether there's any evidence in the world that would get people especially rival fans to change their mind. It probably doesn't help that City keep winning things. But the writeup can hopefully can still be useful to some.

As always corrections welcome.

"It's obvious that City have been cheating their way to the top since the current owners came in."

City's current owners took over in 2008. The implementation of FFP by UEFA happened in 2011/2012 season, and by the Premier league in 2013. City's owners invested a lot in the beginning period of the club. Clearly, the spending when the takeover happened was intended to accelerate the pace of the team to challenge for top 4.

However City, unlike other top clubs, had this funding phase coincide with the introduction of FFP. The LessBrain post covers how when the initial implementation of FFP by UEFA was rolled out, City made preparations to meet and abide by them. However UEFA changed the initially drafted rules about how FFP would be assessed. This had a huge accounting implication which is covered in detail by Swiss Ramble, as a result of which City resolved the situation by taking a settlement fine with UEFA.

"City wouldn't have been fined if they were not guilty."

The club paid the settlement during the UEFA case, but this is not an admission of guilt. The club has never accepted that they broke the FFP rules. And indeed, they were not found guilty.

The fine was in fact for 'not cooperating' in handing in emails late. The Club has always maintained its innocence. Note that the CAS ruling was word for word: "Manchester City FC did not disguise equity funding as sponsorship contributions but did fail to cooperate with the UEFA authorities."

"Not cooperating means they had something to hide."

A common misunderstanding is that City was withholding evidence, but the non cooperation charge is for submitting emails requested by UEFA late. Importantly, the emails requested were submitted in full in the end and the relevant parties were called forth as witnesses for questioning. Further, they did not withhold any actual accounting related documents.

Note that the normal course of an investigation would be to find evidence of wrongdoing, and then make charges. i.e. the burden of proof should be on UEFA. But the CAS ruling makes clear that UEFA did not have the evidence to charge City, all they had was the leaked emails and they were trying to build a case by digging around.

"City was only found innocent during the UEFA investigations because evidence became time barred."

In the UEFA case, City was accused of disgusting equity funding through the sponsorships of Eitsalat and Etihad. CAS only ruled one allegations regarding one sponsor-- Eitsalat --as time barred, but for Etihad they were not, and the final ruling was to clear City. This means that Borson details in this thread, CAS just did did not make a finding because they didn't have to, not because they were forced to abandon evidence of guilt.

"There are literally emails proving city is guilty."

The PL has not specified what evidence they are using in their ongoing investigation. But a lot of people use the leaked emails from Der Spiegel, which were the basis of the UEFA case, as evidence of guilt. Note the club maintained during CAS that these were specific doctored emails from a pile of hacked emails.

Most commonly people discuss one part of these emails in which the club appear to ask the Etihad for 8m, which is less than the reported value of the sponsorship. But in fact, later on in the same email, the Etihad representative clearly refers to the full reported amount of £67.5m.

More importantly, during the UEFA case the auditors were fully aware of the emails (leaked 2018) and checked the transactions that are referenced in those leaked emails. This included auditors hired by UEFA for the case. Note that UEFA has also asked Der Spiegel for more evidence relevant to the case, but the leakers didn't have any; thus City was cleared of the charges by CAS.

"City has obviously been artificially inflating revenue, by getting sponsorships from their owners."

The PL and UEFA have defined exactly what counts as a 'related party' for the purposes of determining whether the sponsoring company is related to the owner. However, LessBrain also summarized that in fact related party sponsors are actually allowed under UEFA FFP rules and many clubs have this arrangement. E.g., Bayern's shareholders Allianz, Adidas etc openly sponsor them thus have the ability to profit from their own sponsorship.

That said, Borson summarizes that the Etihad etc are NOT under current rules considered related parties by auditors and by UEFA, and UEFA also assessed the value of the Etihad's sponsorship and found that it was fair value.

"The commercial revenue City reports is obviously fake. How can it be larger than other clubs with more history."

Firstly, City's revenue as shown by Deloitte Football Money League did not become the largest in European football until the 2021/22 season, a decade delayed from their trophy success.

Still many people demand, how could its revenue ever come close to big clubs with history and so many more fans? But there is no law that 1 fan = X dollars of revenue, as if the major source of income of clubs is shirt sales or tickets. The most valuable revenue source for clubs (Deloitte) is actually broadcast revenue and commercial sponsorship agreements. City has made it far in most competitions e.g. CL every year ensuring broadcast revenue is pretty consistent. And the club as of 21/22 have almost 40 different commercial sponsors.

Each sponsor has certain things they care about when they sponsor, such as the values of the ambassador, the appeal of the club in their target market, and most of all -- as summarized by LessBrain, commercial revenue also follows success in the competition. City as of late are the most successful club in terms of going far in competitions, in the richest league in England.

I don't know exactly how the sponsor agreements were negotiated, but the following might be points in City's favor:

they have consistently done well in PL and domestic cups, and advanced in the CL.

there are many young fans. The club is quite popular on 'young people platforms'.

They're very attentive to international fans. e.g. their foreign language platforms release regular subtitled content.

The club has a large portion of English players e.g. Grealish, the most commercially valuable English male footballer atm, and a successful academy.

"City couldn't attract good players unless they pay them under the table."

The points above can also be considered attractions for players. Players can come here and have a chance at every major trophy and of proving themselves for the national team.

Many times the City charges seem to get tied up with secret payments, which implies repeated accounting fraud and tax evasion. But CFG is a huge global business with clubs around the world. There is a saying that "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead". Although we don't know what evidence the PL has, thousands of people -- players, agents, accountants -- have participated in these transactions.

Furthermore, why would the club need to pay more illegally when they openly report some of the highest fees in football? It would be, frankly, stupid and the ownership has shown that they are competent.

"The club is just spending their way to success, it's not organic."

A certain level of spending is what it takes to be a top club and everyone knows it. This is why the spanish government gave their own clubs millions in tax breaks and why big clubs back in 2009 got in so much debt. No club has broken into the top and stayed there "organically", e.g. Leicester breached FFP on the way to their PL title.

I see a lot of big 4 fans say things like 'we never broke FFP, we don't need owner handouts'. Of course, because FFP which was only implemented in 2011. At the time of FFP they were big brands already, already generating more income, getting priority on talent, and also going forward allowed to spend more.

For a new entrant to top 4, a lot of infrastructure, squad investment, and transfer spend is needed. And this was the way that Chelsea, City and now Newcastle have done it in the PL.

"It's just an oil club."

I guess City fans could start standing on the moral high ground too if the club had 'clean' sponsors instead... like Emirates or Petro-Canada Lubricants

[gavin]

This non co-operation nonsense makes me laugh. I think they're expecting us to hand them evidence of our own guilt and when we don't they find us guilty of non co-operation. Why on earth would we want to co-operate with investigations that are so obviously designed to get us no matter what at the behest of our competitors.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if when the rags and Liverpool interviewed Masters for the Premier League job they made his appointment conditional on charging City.

[Kilkenny Blue]

This non co-operation nonsense makes me laugh. I think they're expecting us to hand them evidence of our own guilt and when we don't they find us guilty of non co-operation. Why on earth would we want to co-operate with investigations that are so obviously designed to get us no matter what at the behest of our competitors.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if when the rags and Liverpool interviewed Masters for the Premier League job they made his appointment conditional on charging City.

I think that the cozy cartel of Arsenal, Liverpool and Utd shot themselves in the foot when the 3 of them tried to bring in the Super League. They literally stuck up 2 fingers to their bedmates in UEFA, the PL and the FA.  These 3 clubs seem to be behind everything.  They tried to force UEFA to ban City from the CL before due process had taken place.  it's no secret that the City owners did Liverpool a massive favour by not reporting the hacking scandal to the FA.  I'd love to City legally challenge the NDA and expose who was involved and to what level.  The fact that Liverpool insisted on the NDA is enough to indicate that they were in deep deep brown stuff.

[reddishblue]

The charges were rushed through without thought as the PL were about to be overseen by a true independent regulator and shit themselves as they were obviously incompetent as this farce shows. They wanted to know things (imo) that were not relevant to any so called breaches of FFP and intrude into our private financial dealings to see if they could possibly catch up and stall our progress somewhat.

As Khaldoon said. "people in glass homes shouldn't throw rocks."

[Stephen Paul]

Big rumours these charges are going to be dropped

[Kilkenny Blue]

Big rumours these charges are going to be dropped

I hope not.  All we'll hear about then is that we paid them off or got off on a loophole as per the UEFA CAS verdict.  If a lot of the evidence is based on the Rui Silva hacked documents  then I can well imagine the PL withdrawing the charges as the authenticity of the majority of these have been proven to be abridged. It also came to light that his main reason for hacking was for extortion.  Maybe the PL realise that the can of worms they've opened means that they'll have to use the same vigor and investigate all clubs.  Someone told me recently that Liverpool and at least 2 other clubs (he said one of them might be West Ham) are currently being investigated for dodgy payments to players and tax avoidance.

[gavin]

The sooner it is all dropped the better. People who want to have a problem with City will continue to, whether it is dropped tomorrow or whether it goes to the very end of the process and then City are cleared. You have to remember that people like Jamie Carragher think that they know it all. They are so stupid that they don't realise that they are.

[Kilkenny Blue]

The sooner it is all dropped the better. People who want to have a problem with City will continue to, whether it is dropped tomorrow or whether it goes to the very end of the process and then City are cleared. You have to remember that people like Jamie Carragher think that they know it all. They are so stupid that they don't realise that they are.

That is very true.  The irony is that there is a lot more evidence of collusion and certain clubs being protected than there ever was against City.

[Kilkenny Blue]

.....after my last post I found this!  Surely this can't be true?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/02/10/row-brewing-liverpool-manchester-uniteds-involvement-premier/