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Man City charged with breaking the Premier League’s financial rules numerous times.
Manchester City have been charged by the Premier League for breaching financial more than 100 times in the course of nine seasons.
The allegations against the defending champions centre on financial data relating to income, specifics of manager and player compensation, UEFA rules, profitability and sustainability, and Premier League investigations.
Alleged violations, which the league says were committed between September 2009 and the 2017–18 season, will now be forwarded to an impartial panel.
Man City could be subject to a number of penalties, including expulsion and a loss of points if they are proven guilty.
Between the dates mentioned, Man City won three Premier League titles, an FA Cup and three Carabao Cups.
The Premier League said in a statement: ‘In accordance with Premier League Rule W.82.1, the Premier League confirms that it has today referred a number of alleged breaches of the Premier League Rules by Manchester City Football Club to a Commission.’
The investigation was started in December 2018 when data from the Football Leaks cache, which were obtained by the Portuguese computer hacker Rui Pinto, were released by the German investigative website Der Spiegel.
It alleged that City had: overstated sponsorship income, with money being paid by the club’s Abu Dhabi owners instead of sponsors linked to the Gulf state; effectively doubled former manager Roberto Mancini’s wages via a secret contact with an Abu Dhabi club and broke rules over approaches to young players.
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The team was previously banned from the Champions League and fined £25 million when it was discovered that they had badly deceived the regulatory body of European football, UEFA, and violated financial fair play regulations.
The court of arbitration for sport subsequently lifted this and decreased the club’s sentence to £9 million.
At the time, the panel stated that City had engaged in “obstruction of the investigations” and displayed a “disregard” for the rule that clubs must comply with governing body queries.
However, on the central finding by the CFCB’s adjudicatory chamber that City’s Abu Dhabi ownership had disguised its own funding as independent sponsorship by the state’s commercial companies, the CAS found: ‘Most of the alleged breaches were either not established or time-barred.’
Under Premier League rules, there is no similar restriction on the length of time since an alleged offence.
Two years after the launch of the Premier League’s investigation, an arbitration tribunal ordered City to provide “certain documents and information to the Premier League and to make enquiries of third parties”, the Court of Appeal said.
In July 2021 a Court of Appeal decision revealed that City had challenged the jurisdiction of an arbitration panel set up by the Premier League and had, unsuccessfully, legally challenged demands to hand over documents and information.
One of the judges, Lord Justice Males, said in the ruling: “This is an investigation which commenced in December 2018. It is surprising, and a matter of legitimate public concern, that so little progress has been made after two and a half years — during which, it may be noted, the club has twice been crowned as Premier League champions.’
In March 2019, the Premier League first confirmed an investigation was underway after a number of top-flight clubs raised the issue of the allegations against City.