And now it's official: according to the Premier League's three-person independent commission, Manchester City have been found guilty of inflated revenues and lowered costs through "sham" (the league's own remark) sponsorship deals, self-dealing image rights contracts with phony companies and off-the-books payments.
This inflated reporting enabled them to disguise more than £900 million ($1.18 billion) as legitimate commercial revenue over a nine-year period when, in fact, it was nothing more than the owner, Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), dipping into the family coffers. In so doing, they severely breached the Financial Sustainability rules laid out by the Premier League and UEFA -- regulations they publicly endorsed and claimed to support. Along the way, among the 100+ charges they were also found guilty of false accounting -- which is somewhat inevitable when you misstate the source and scope of your income -- failing to cooperate with investigators and failing to "act in the utmost good faith." All in all, a breathtaking set of findings.
After Friday's news that City had been found guilty had broken, but was not yet official, City chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak issued a statement Saturday saying "our confidence and intent in proving the club's innocence is just as strong as when this began." He also made reference to "irrefutable evidence," which felt odd when he knew it had been refuted just 48 hours earlier by the independent commission. City are entitled to appeal the decision by this Friday, though it's worth noting that no new evidence can be brought in as part of the appeal process.
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We are not privy to the entire judgement -- partly because it's freakishly long and dense, partly due to the Premier League's confidentiality rules -- but the 40-page "Core Decision," even with its myriad redactions, illustrates quite clearly the case against City and doesn't pull punches in terms of its language, describing City's actions as a "sham" on several occasions.
What was new -- because over the past 15 years, the club has never addressed any specific charge other than to repeat ad nauseam that they were compliant with all regulations -- was some of their arguments. Most striking, perhaps, is how they justified the fact that between 2009-10 and 2017-18, they claimed to have received some £949.94 million ($1.254 billion) in commercial revenue from Abu Dhabi sponsors, but only £119.25m was actually paid by the partners themselves. The rest came from ADUG.