PSG deny Uefa financial rules breach

Paris St-germain last night denied that an inquiry into whether they breached Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules had unearthed evidence that could result in them being banned from next season’s Champions League.

The Qatari-owned French champions dismissed a report in the Financial Times that a preliminary investigation had found the value of sponsorship deals at the club had been “significantly overstated” compared with their true worth. Were it true, it would put PSG on course to breach Uefa’s FFP rules that clubs are limited to making losses of no more than €30 million over three seasons, an offence for which they were fined £50million four years ago.

Uefa opened an investigation after PSG recruited Neymar from Barcelona for £200 million and signed Mbappe on a highly controversial £167 million loan-tobuy deal from Monaco last summer.

According to the Financial Times, the investigatory arm of Uefa appointed sports consultants Octagon to conduct an independent review of PSG’S sponsorship contracts and it found contracts in the region of £175million to have been “significantly overstated”. The report said Uefa’s investigatory team was due to meet next week to discuss the findings and that PSG were planning to contest them

A spokesman for PSG branded the report “totally false”, and the club added: “The European body has a very clear and transparent view of the club’s financial status. Paris St-germain is in continuous communication with Uefa and will go to Uefa with confidence on April 20.”

Uefa declined to comment on the newspaper report.