In June this year, a Portuguese computer hacker in witness protection called Rui Pinto was reported to have told a conference that he was in possession of “millions of documents” that could be relevant to the City case.
Pinto was known to the game authorities. The 34-year-old was the man behind the Football Leaks website, which has exposed confidential football transfer and contract information.
Despite always insisting he was a whistleblower, last year a court in Lisbon handed him a four-year suspended sentence after finding him guilty of attempted blackmail, illegal access to information and breach of correspondence. But his threat to release more information – his lawyer confirmed – was a timely reminder of the continuing role of one key figure in this remarkable story.
German publication Der Spiegel claimed in 2018 that City had manipulated contracts to circumvent Uefa rules and said its source was a whistleblower they called “John” – the pseudonym Pinto created Football Leaks.
Der Spiegel had published leaked documents, including emails allegedly sent between top City executives (some of whom are still at City Football Group) over several seasons following the club’s Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008.
They claimed that these showed that the club had inflated sponsorship income from state-owned airline Etihad and state-controlled telecom company Etisalat by disguising direct investments from its holding company (Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group or ADUG) as sponsorship income by channeling the funds into the companies’ accounts.
This was claimed to be a way to comply with the “Financial Fair Play” (FFP) rules introduced by Uefa in 2011 and the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) introduced by the Premier League in 2012, which limit the losses clubs are allowed to make.
Further allegations of financial misreporting then followed, centered on documents allegedly showing secret “off-the-books” payments to then-manager Roberto Mancini through consultancy fees from the Abu Dhabi-based club and giving players more money than was officially going. through the accounts so that the recorded expenses were lower than in reality.
City – which has always insisted that ADUG is a private fund and not an arm of the state – refused to comment on Der Spiegel’s revelations, saying the leaked emails had been obtained illegally and were “an attempt to damage the club’s reputation”.
City – and the companies involved – strongly denied that they had broken the financial rules. But that didn’t stop both UEFA and the Premier League from launching investigations.
City were fined millions of pounds by Uefa back in 2014 as part of a settlement after they were found to have breached FFP rules designed to make the game more sustainable but which critics say historically protect the biggest clubs by limiting investment by rivals, particularly those with Middle Eastern supporters .
Then in early 2020, the club received a two-year ban from European club competitions after being found guilty of “serious breaches” of the governing body’s rules. An independent panel of Uefa’s club financial watchdog found that City had “overstated its sponsorship income in its accounts submitted to Uefa between 2012 and 2016”, adding that the club “failed to co-operate with the investigation”.
Criticizing what it called a “prejudicial” decision following a “flawed and persistently leaky process,” the City cited “an extensive body of undisputed evidence to support its position” and appealed.
A few months later they were successful, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) overturned the ban, saying that it had found “no clear evidence that they disguised the funding from their owner as sponsorship” and that most of the alleged violations were either unsubstantiated or “outdated” because they fell outside the five-year statutory deadline for prosecution.
Cas revealed that Sheikh Mansour had written a letter to the court insisting that he “had not authorized ADUG to make any payments to Etihad, Etisalat or any of their affiliates in relation to their sponsorship of MCFC”.
However, it also found that City had committed a “serious breach” by failing to co-operate with Uefa’s investigation, and the original £25m fine was reduced to £8m.
For more than two years, the saga seemed to be quiet, but behind the scenes the Premier League’s investigation had continued. In July 2021, there was a dramatic glimpse of that when a High Court judge revealed that the Premier League had effectively accused City of delaying tactics by refusing to hand over documents and ordering the club to do so.
And then at the start of 2023 came the most sensational twist to this saga so far, when, with City on their way to a third of four successive titles and their first Champions League win, they received that list of accusations that concerned. every year since Sheikh Mansour bought the club.
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