UEFA allegations against Man City 'simply not true', says Soriano

Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano has denied claims that the Premier League champions broke the rules over Financial Fair Play regulations.

City were on Friday given a two-season ban from European football and fined 30million euros (£24.9million) for breaching financial regulations, but have vowed to fight the verdict of a UEFA investigation into accounts submitted by the club between 2012 and 2016.

"These allegations are simply not true," Sorriano said. "The owner has not put moneyinthisclubthathasnotbeen properly declared. We are a sustainable football club, we are profitable, we don't have debt, our accounts have been scrutinisedmanytimes,byauditors, by regulators, by investors and this is perfectly clear."

City, who have referred the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, have also been accused of not cooperating with the process. But Soriano said: "We did cooperate with this process.

"We delivered a long list of documents and support that we believe is irrefutable evidence that the claims are not true and it was hard because we did this in the context of information being leaked to the media in the context of feeling that every step of the way, every engagement we had, we felt thatwewereconsideredguilty before anything was even discussed.Butattheend,thisisan internal process that has been initiated and then prosecuted and then judged by this FFP chamber at UEFA."

City responded to UEFA's decision by calling it a "prejudiced process" and Soriano said: "Of course a lot of people come now and say, well what were you expecting? This is the way it works.

"You should have expected a negative outcome the way the system is designed. But we didn't believe that. We provided the evidence but in the end this FFP Investigatory Chamber relied more on out of context stolen emails than all the other evidence we provided of what actually happened and I think it is normal that we feel like we feel.

"Ultimately based on our experienceandourperception this seems to be less about justice and more about politics.

"We went to CAS mid-process because it was clear to us that we were not having a fair process and we were concerned. We were specifically concernedabouttheleaks,the constant leak of information.

"The process has finished now, we are going to CAS again."