Manchester City has lost the first round, but the almost one billion pound dispute is far from over. To overturn the decision on appeal, the club will have to show where the money came from – and explain why any decisive evidence was not presented earlier. At the same time, the case raises a broader question: Can football’s disciplinary process withstand geopolitical pressure and keep the focus on the evidence?
Op-ed by Egil André Berglund, lawyer and former chair of both the Prosecution Committee and the Appeals Committee of the Norwegian Football Association
The £830m the commission traced to City’s owner
Manchester City argued that the Abu Dhabi authorities helped its sponsors meet their payments. The Premier League’s disciplinary commission considered that explanation and rejected it. On appeal, the club faces a high bar for introducing new evidence, while questions about its accounts, potential tax implications and political pressure could reach well beyond football.
Between the 2009/10 and 2017/18 seasons, Manchester City recorded 949.94 million pounds as revenue from the club’s Abu Dhabi sponsors. The Premier League’s independent disciplinary commission found that the sponsors had funded only 119.25 million pounds themselves. It concluded that the remaining 830.69 million came from the club’s owner, Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), and should have been recorded as a capital contribution rather than sponsorship revenue. City contested the charges, but the commission found them proved, apart from Charge 4(B), which concerned the club’s duty to cooperate with the Premier League.
Why does the distinction matter? Football’s financial rules treat owner funding differently from sponsorship revenue. The commission found more than a bookkeeping error: it concluded that Manchester City had presented money from ADUG as commercial income, obscuring the club’s reliance on its owner. It also found that auditors and regulators had not been told the true nature of the arrangement.
The Abu Dhabi funding explanation that failed to convince
Manchester City’s position was that its sponsors owed the full amounts and paid them from their own funds. The club said that any assistance it received came from the Abu Dhabi authorities, through the Crown Prince Court (CPC), rather than from its owner, Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). On that account, ADUG had not disguised capital contributions as sponsorship revenue.
The Crown Prince Court (CPC) is not a judicial court. It is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed’s personal office, although legally it forms part of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
The commission examined that distinction and rejected Manchester City’s explanation that the funding came from the Crown Prince Court rather than ADUG. It found that the explanation had been devised after the fact to conceal funding from the club’s owner. That finding matters on appeal: the claim that the money came from the Abu Dhabi authorities, not ADUG, is not a new argument. City has already made it, and the commission rejected it.
The commission’s findings were unusually stark. It found that several key witnesses called by Manchester City gave false evidence on central issues, and that some testified to matters they knew were untrue. It also found that the club had made targeted attempts to obstruct the Premier League’s investigation. However, the commission did not find a breach of the duty to cooperate alleged in Charge 4(B), and it did not rule on further allegations of misleading answers that the Premier League had reserved the right to bring but had not charged in these proceedings.
The appeal hurdle: why wasn’t the evidence produced earlier?
Both Manchester City and the Premier League Board can appeal the commission’s decision, including any sanctions it imposes. Under Section W of the Premier League rules, an appeal is heard by an Appeal Board and must generally be lodged within 14 days of the decision.
Rule W.75 of the Premier League rules is a significant hurdle for any party seeking to introduce new evidence from Abu Dhabi on appeal. A party can apply to do so, but permission may be granted only if the evidence was unavailable to the commission and could not have been obtained through reasonable diligence. Unless new evidence is admitted, Rule W.79 provides for the Appeal Board to review the evidence already before the commission, with the parties permitted to make oral submissions.
If Manchester City seeks to produce further documents showing that the Abu Dhabi authorities, rather than ADUG, funded the sponsors, two questions arise: what do the documents prove, and why were they not produced earlier? The commission said that millions of documents had been disclosed in the first round. It also noted that some potential witnesses had not given evidence and that certain relevant documents had not been produced. Whether any new evidence satisfies Rule W.75 will depend on what it is and why it was not available earlier.
The origin, authenticity and evidential weight of any new documents or testimony from the Abu Dhabi authorities will also require careful assessment. The Appeal Board will need to assess what the material establishes, when it was created, and how it fits with the payment records and other contemporaneous documents. An Appeal Board might face diplomatic pressure if it rejected evidence from the Abu Dhabi authorities. But that possibility says nothing about whether the evidence is reliable, and it gives no reason to suggest that any new evidence has been, or will be, fabricated.
Even a successful challenge to the finding about the source of the money would not necessarily overturn the decision. The commission also found that the sponsorship agreements should have been disclosed as related-party transactions. And, in applying the financial rules, it assessed their market value on an alternative basis: even if it was wrong about disguised owner funding, it considered the recorded sponsorship values too high. Manchester City would therefore need to challenge several independent strands of the commission’s reasoning, not just its finding about the flow of funds.
Beyond football: what could public authorities investigate?
Football’s disciplinary process is one track; any investigation by public authorities is another. The commission found that Manchester City’s accounts for the years in question did not accurately reflect the club’s financial position. It also found that ADUG-funded arrangements kept remuneration costs out of the accounts, and that an arrangement involving players’ image rights inflated revenue while concealing expenses. Those findings could prompt scrutiny under tax, company or criminal law. They are not, in themselves, findings of liability under any of those laws.
There have been reports that the UK tax authorities have requested access to the case papers, although I have not been able to verify them. Even if a request was made, it would not, by itself, mean that anyone is under criminal investigation. It would, however, sharpen a question: what might public authorities find if they examine matters beyond the scope of the Premier League’s disciplinary case?
In any such investigation, accounting records, audit trails, sponsorship agreements, bank transactions, payroll information and correspondence could all be relevant. If criminal investigators opened an inquiry, they might also examine computers, phones, tablets, cloud accounts and backups. Depending on the circumstances, forensic examination could reveal traces of data that someone had tried to delete. But the commission’s decision does not automatically give public authorities access to every document or the power to copy every device. The relevance of the material and the lawful basis for obtaining it would have to be assessed in each case.
The Premier League’s own rules require a club that becomes aware of an investigation to preserve potentially relevant documents and information in their existing format. The rules also allow the league to require documents from clubs and certain people subject to its rules. Those obligations arise under the Premier League’s disciplinary rules and should not be equated with the statutory powers available to law enforcement authorities to compel the production of evidence.
Former manager Roberto Mancini has been mentioned in reporting about remuneration and tax. The publicly available main decision is redacted, however, and conceals the identities of people involved in several of the remuneration arrangements it describes. The decision alone therefore establishes nothing about Mancini’s personal tax affairs or any potential criminal liability. Earlier reports in the English media alleged that, for four days’ work a year for a club in Abu Dhabi, Mancini received annual compensation exceeding his salary as Manchester City manager. They also alleged that Manchester City paid that compensation directly. If Mancini has not already explained the reported arrangement to the UK tax authorities, orally or in writing, he and Manchester City may soon be asked to do so.
Clubs or players who consider that the alleged rule breaches caused them loss may also seek damages. Several Premier League clubs have reportedly taken steps to preserve their right to bring potential claims against Manchester City and to prevent those claims from becoming time-barred.
A diplomatic passport does not settle the immunity question
Manchester City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak’s position raises a separate issue if investigators seek access to his communications or electronic devices. Recent reports suggest that he holds a diplomatic passport. That alone, however, does not establish that he enjoys diplomatic immunity in the UK, or determine whether investigators could lawfully examine a particular phone. The answer would depend on his status and the protections applicable to the proposed investigative step.
Even if he does enjoy personal immunity, that would not necessarily prevent investigators from obtaining correspondence or payment records held independently by the club, sponsors, banks or others. Equally, they could not simply assume that they are entitled to seize or make forensic copies of his own devices. Diplomatic status could impose a significant constraint, but its effect cannot be assessed without establishing both his status and the particular measure investigators propose to take.
When geopolitics meets football`s rules: which will give way?
There is a further consequence that no appeal can settle: the potential effect on relations between the United Kingdom and Abu Dhabi. The English media has reported allegations that Abu Dhabi authorities warned they would halt further investment in England if the Manchester City case ends in an adverse decision. I have not been able to verify whether any such warning was made, who made it or what it concerned.
If a warning was conveyed, it raises an important question. Could concerns about investment and foreign relations put pressure on a process that should be decided under football’s rules and on the evidence? And what would it mean for the Premier League’s international reputation if clubs and supporters came to believe that financial and geopolitical influence could outweigh rules that apply equally to every club?
There is no basis for suggesting that the commission or an Appeal Board will give way to political pressure. That makes it all the more important to keep the issues separated. Manchester City is entitled to challenge an adverse decision, but its appeal must succeed or fail on the merits of its objections and the evidence properly before the Appeal Board—not on the geopolitical influence associated with the club.
One immediate question concerns any documents that may now be produced to support the claim that Abu Dhabi authorities funded the sponsors. What would those documents establish, and why were they not available when the commission considered the same explanation?
Josimar regularly opens its columns to independent guest contributors who wish to comment on the most pressing issues in world football. These columns solely reflect the opinion of their authors. Their publication does not constitute an endorsement on Josimar’s behalf, but a way to encourage and promote debate within the football community.
