Man City Found Guilty on All Financial Rule Charges — SkimNews
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- Manchester City were found guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of financial rules and all but one charge of failing to co-operate, in a 40-page ruling in which the word "sham" appears eight times.
- The "Disguised Funding Scheme" concealed over £830m in sponsorship funding from 2009-10 to 2017-18 by splitting deals into base fees paid by sponsors and "tagged sums" paid by the club's Abu Dhabi United Group owners.
- Of £949.94m in commercial sponsorship income across those nine seasons, only £119.25m represented genuine base fees — £830.69m came from the club's owners via the tagged sums, and the commission rejected City's explanation as a story "concocted well after the event."
- The Fordham Arrangement under Project Longbow used a third party the commission called "little more than a front" to route owner funds into the club, wrongly recording £24.5m as operating income and wrongly excluding £49.414m from operating expenses.
- The ruling found that evidence from several factual witnesses "was false in a number of key respects" and that certain witnesses provided statements "they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest," with the commission concluding City "made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the Premier League investigation."
- In May 2013, less than a week before the financial year end, modified sponsor agreements were generated — without sponsors even being approached — to plug a £9.9m UEFA FFP shortfall by inflating recorded fees for past events and a US tour.
- Across all concealment devices — sponsorship overstatement, off-books player and manager contracts, and the Fordham front — a total of £920.68m was either overstated as income or wrongly excluded as expenses.
Why it matters: The commission's finding that witnesses were dishonest and that the club actively frustrated the investigation exposes unnamed individuals associated with City to scrutiny from the new Independent Football Regulator, which can examine the integrity of directors and owners — extending the case's reach beyond sporting sanctions into governance accountability.
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