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Manchester City has been accused of breaking the financial rules after a long-running investigation by Premier League. The EPL has referred the club to a commission over possible breaches between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. In 2020, City managed to overturn a two-year ban from European club competitions by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
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This action was taken after UEFA ruled that Man City committed "serious breaches" of Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations between 2012 and 2016. UEFA initially banned City for two years and fined the club €30 million (about £27 million) for alleged financial fair play breaches connected to sponsorship payments.
Similarly, the Premier League have publicly accused the club of numerous rule breaches, which go as far as back to 2009-10 campaign. Between 2009-10 and 2017-18, Man City has been accused of not accurately reporting their financial information in each season, along with various minor rules broken in the process.
Coming back to the most recent allegations, the Premier League released a statement listing the breaches and said, “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.”
This investigation was started in December 2018 after the German investigative website Der Spiegel produced documents regarding wrongdoings from the Football Leaks cache. These originated papers were acquired from the Portuguese computer hacker Rui Pinto.
It alleged that City had exaggerated the income received from sponsorship with money which was paid by the club’s Abu Dhabi owners instead of sponsors linked to the gulf state. This directly doubled former manager Roberto Mancini’s wages via a secret contact with an Abu Dhabi club. Similarly, rules were also broken over approaches to young players.
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