City face repercussions for misleading UEFA on finances

LONDON: European football’s leadership have an initial conclusion on leaked Manchester City correspondence: The club have been misleading UEFA over their finances.

With the power to ban clubs from the Champions League, the consequences from UEFA could be severe for the English Premier League champions.

UEFA discovered from reading internal e-mails from City, which were published by German media outlet Der Spiegel last month, the extent of schemes by the club to allegedly cover up the true source of income in a bid to comply with Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, a person with direct knowledge of the situation said.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the situation publicly while UEFA conduct a review of the City case.

City have been transformed into an English football power in the decade since being bought by Sheikh Mansour Zayed Al Nahyan, a Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family, winning the Premier League three times since 2012.

But unfettered spending on players has been restricted by European football’s governing body – regardless of the owners’ wealth.

City have already been punished by UEFA for violating FFP, striking an agreement in 2014 that saw the team fined rather than banned from the Champions League for inflated sponsorship deals with companies linked to the club or their ownership.

UEFA publicly said last month that evidence from Football Leaks could lead to past cases being re-opened.

The person with knowledge of the situation said it was more feasible to use the leaks to re-assess the candor of club executives and as a basis to judge City’s compliance with FFP in the current three-year assessment period.

That covers 2015 when Der Spiegel said e-mails were being sent internally at City showing the manipulation of sponsorship revue from Etihad Airways, the stateowned airline from Abu Dhabi, which is the naming rights sponsor of City’s stadium and training campus as well as appearing on jerseys.

The sponsorship was said to generate £67.5mil (RM357mil) annually for City.

But City’s holding company – the state-backed Abu Dhabi United Group – channelled £59.9mil (RM317mil) back to Etihad, according to Jorge Chumillas, the club’s chief financial officer, in an internal e-mail to club director Simon Pearce.

Given the fresh insight into City’s financial dealings, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has said there was a “public interest” in the correspondence being leaked, while questioning how it was obtained.

“We are assessing the situation. We have an independent body working on it,” Ceferin said on Monday.

“Very soon you will have the answers on what will happen in this concrete case.”