Investigators say a money trail ultimately exposed Manchester City's financial schemes

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — A series of “sham” deals to disguise payments made to Manchester City by the club's Emirati owner, according to investigators, reveal a ploy to circumvent European soccer's financial fair-play rules that is both sophisticated and, at its core, as simple as it gets.

An ambitious club with a fabulously wealthy new owner was in a hurry to reshape the landscape of global soccer's richest and most popular league, according to the bombshell findings of an independent investigatory panel that were released Tuesday. The only problem was that the sport's governing bodies have rules to restrict teams from spending far beyond what they earn, no matter how wealthy their owners might be .

According to the Premier League, City set up complex schemes to disguise that it was unfairly being bankrolled by its owner , the Abu Dhabi United Group, or ADUG, from 2009-18 — nine years in which it established itself as a powerhouse.

Leaked emails published in 2018 led to a lengthy investigation and hearing into alleged financial misconduct, which resulted in the new findings in what many view as the biggest scandal in the league's history.

City, which has dominated English soccer for more than a decade by spending exorbitantly on superstar players and hiring top coaches, was found “guilty” of almost all of the more than 100 “charges” against it and now faces punishment that could be as severe as expulsion from the league . The club has always denied wrongdoing and has said it will appeal.

In its lengthy list of allegations against City, which accompanied the investigation findings, the Premier League recounted how the storied club, which had seen better days on the pitch and was losing money, was sold in 2008 to ADUG. The private investment company is “ultimately owned by” Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the United Arab Emirates' ruling family, according to the report.

By the 2009-10 season, City realized it was in line to suffer financial losses for years, including what would have been the biggest loss ever by a Premier League club. The only way to fund its planned expenditure "would be by ADUG continuing to provide very significant sums," the league alleged.

City set up “sham” commercial deals — the report uses the term eight times — with Abu Dhabi-based companies that were priced “well above” fair market value and structured in a way that meant the bulk of the payments were covered by the club's owner, the panel found.

The panel described this as City's “Disguised Funding Scheme” and said it was broken down into two parts. Team sponsors paid a “base sum” that amounted to “only a fraction” of the recorded sponsorship fee. The remaining amount, which was far bigger and was dubbed the “tagged sum," would be "payable by (and was in fact paid) by ADUG.”

City occasionally “tweaked” its scheme to “reduce the likelihood of difficult questions being asked," according to the panel.

Figures show the alleged tagged sums grew over the period in question, rising to 134.73 million pounds ($179 million at current exchange rates) in 2017-18.

The club said the Premier League misunderstood how its Abu Dhabi-based sponsorship was funded.

It said sponsors had from “time to time” applied for and been granted financial assistance from the Abu Dhabi government to help pay sponsorship fees.

The panel rejected that explanation as untrue and concluded it had been “concocted well after the event in an attempt to obscure and conceal the realities of the Disguised Funding Scheme.”

Over the nine years, it found Abu Dhabi sponsors only paid 119.25 million pounds ($158.4 million) of the 949.94 million pounds ($1.26 billion) stated in club accounts. ADUG paid the remaining 830.69 million pounds ($1.1 billion).

As an example of the alleged machinations, the report pointed to May of 2013, when it said City needed to plug a shortfall of 9.9 million pounds ($13.15 million) or it would have been in breach of financial rules.

“In a matter of days, without AD Sponsors even being approached, a number of modified AD Sponsor Agreements were generated," the report alleges, referring to Abu Dhabi sponsors and noting that the "shortfall was thus ‘plugged.'”

During the nine years in question, City signed top players such as Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne, as well as the renowned managers Roberto Mancini and Pep Guardiola. It won three Premier League titles, including the first of Guardiola’s six, and a slew of other trophies. And by finishing at or near the top of the table, City qualified for the Champions League — a financial windfall for any team — in eight of the nine seasons.

The report also detailed the so-called Fordham Agreement, which investigators said was a vehicle set up to buy the image rights of City players from the club at artificially inflated prices, but was “in reality little more than a front.”

The arrangement was actually just a way for owner funds to be paid into the club “in a manner that concealed their true origin” and “pretend” it was operating income, according to the report. It also allowed City to “remove operating expenses from its financial statements” and use owner funds to “meet what were in reality Club liabilities."

The result was wrongly recorded operating income of 24.5 million pounds ($32.5 million) and wrongly excluded operating expenses of 49.414 million pounds ($65.58 million), the panel found.

There were separate deals that allege some salaries were supplemented by the owner and occasionally described as consultancy agreements.

The names of the people involved are redacted, but three instances were valued in total at 16.76 million pounds ($22.25 million).

The hearing over 42 days in 2024 was “extremely hard fought on both sides,” and “No stone was left unturned,” the panel wrote.

It included 27 witnesses, more than 700 pages of witness statements and about 7,000 pages of transcripts. Key documents ran into “many tens of thousands of pages.”

According to the panel, evidence given on behalf of City by a number of important factual witnesses was “false in a number of key respects,” and certain witnesses gave evidence “that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest.”

The Premier League said City's conduct amounted to “extremely serious, significant, sustained and intentional or reckless breaches” of its rules “critical to the proper and fair operation” of the league.

James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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