Manchester City’s ongoing legal battles with the Premier League will take a significant step forward in the next fortnight, with the hearing into the club’s 115 alleged rule breaches to start on Monday and a verdict on their case against sponsorship rules in the top flight due before the end of this month.
As The Times revealed last month, the original date for the start of the independent commission into the alleged rule breaches has been brought forward from November, in the hope that a verdict from a hearing that is scheduled to last for ten weeks can be delivered by the beginning of next year.
If the most serious charges are proved, City face the threat of relegation.
The charges against City include not providing full details of Mancini’s pay over the four seasons he was manager
ALEX LIVESEY/GETTY IMAGES
The charges include not providing accurate financial information for nine separate seasons, not providing full details of Roberto Mancini’s pay over the four seasons he was manager at the club from 2009 to 2013, and not providing full details of players’ remuneration — including that of the former midfielder Yaya Touré — over six seasons from 2010-11 to 2015-16.
The English champions have also been charged with not co-operating with an investigation and handing over documents as required over five seasons from 2018-19 to 2022-23.
• Read in full: Man City hearing: what are the 115 charges?
The Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, said in April that a date had been set, adding: “The case will resolve itself at some point in the near future.”
City have consistently denied any wrongdoing and say they have “irrefutable evidence” that will clear them, with Lord Pannick KC appointed to lead a team of barristers in defending the club against the charges as well as the case concerning the Premier League’s rules about associated party transactions (APT’s).
The Premier League launched an investigation into City in 2018 after the publication of the “Football Leaks” documents by the German website Der Spiegel, including copies of Mancini’s contract, image rights agreements involving Touré’s agent, and numerous emails suggesting City’s owners had paid sponsorship money directly.
It is alleged that City did not provide full details of players’ remuneration, including that of former midfielder Touré, left. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by the player or former manager Mancini, right
ACTION IMAGES/LEE SMITH/LIVEPIC
While City were banned by Uefa for two years of European competition in 2019, that sanction was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The court ruled that payments of £30million in allegedly disguised owner equity funding, via the Etisalat telecoms company, could not be dealt with as rule breaches as they were time-barred. Two of the three CAS panel members also cleared City of receiving disguised equity funding via Etihad Airways, saying that “remains unsubstantiated”.
The Etisalat payments can be dealt with by the Premier League among its charges as it does not have the same time restrictions as Uefa.
The Times revealed last year that a Uefa report produced in 2020, but never published, stated that a mystery figure from the United Arab Emirates, “Jaber Mohamed”, paid City £30million that was supposed to come from Etisalat.
The adjudicatory committee of Uefa’s Club Financial Control Board’s (CFCB) report concluded that the payments, which were supposed to come from the UAE’s majority-state-owned telecommunications company, were actually “disguised equity funding”. It alleges that funding came from City’s owner, the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the investment group headed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s vice-president.
City have consistently denied any wrongdoing, saying that they have “irrefutable evidence” that will clear them
OLI SCARFF/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
City’s case was that Etisalat repaid the money to their owners in 2015, but that was not accepted by the Uefa adjudicatory committee.
As one process starts, the other major case involving City and the Premier League is about to reach its conclusion. As The Times revealed in June, City launched an unprecedented legal action against the Premier League in a move that sparked civil war in English football’s top flight.
A two-week hearing took place, with some clubs providing evidence for City and others for the Premier League, into whether the existing APT rules were unlawful, with City also seeking damages from the Premier League.
• Martyn Ziegler: Legal battles could make this Premier League’s most seismic season
Introduced in December 2021 in the wake of the Saudi-led takeover of Newcastle United, the rules were designed to maintain the competitiveness of the Premier League by preventing clubs from inflating commercial deals with companies linked to their owners. The rules dictate that such transactions have to be independently assessed to be of “fair market value”. In their 165-page legal submission City called the rules a “tyranny of the majority”.
Sources have suggested the hearing went well for City’s legal team and expect them to score some form of victory in the case.
