Man City face severe sanctions after 'sham' scheme exposes scale of Premier League breaches: 'Cheating on an industrial scale'

Manchester City face the threat of severe sanctions after an independent commission found they had "clearly intended to circumvent Premier League rules" over a nine-season period. City were found to have engaged in an $1.7 billion AUD scheme to either inflate revenues or reduce costs through a series of "sham" arrangements in order to avoid breaching league and UEFA financial regulations.

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters described the case, and the decision, as "the most significant in Premier League history", with the league's investigation having started back in 2018. More than 100 charges were laid against City in February 2023, with the commission hearing the case between September and December 2024.

The same commission which has given its decision will now consider what sanctions should be imposed, while the club immediately confirmed their intention to appeal, saying the decision "contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe". City chief executive Ferran Soriano told staff on a video that the commission had gone along with the Premier League's "conspiracy theory" and the club made it clear they would fight the verdict with every resource they can.

The club were found by the commission to have operated a "disguised funding scheme" whereby companies from Abu Dhabi paid a fraction of the sum recorded on the club's books, with the balance settled by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the company through which Sheikh Mansour owns the club. The commission made the following over-arching observation - that all the charges "have in common the feature that they involved conduct (and as we have found, intentional conduct) which would disguise the true nature of certain revenues and liabilities/expenses, to give the appearance of minimising the club's financial dependence on ADUG".

That scheme was found to have inflated revenue by more than £830m ($A1.6 bn) over the nine-season period between 2009-10 and 2017-18. The club also were found to have overstated income from image rights by almost £74m ($A140m), and understated liabilities for staff contracts by almost £17m ($A32m).

"It's cheating on an industrial scale. It's quite surreal seeing it written down like that.

You can't mention City without mentioning what's going on because they were so great. I feel like an unprecedented punishment is required here," Arsenal legend Ian Wright said on ITV.

City were also found to have made "concerted efforts" to "stop and frustrate" the Premier League's investigation. The commission found that without engaging in these schemes, the club would have been in breach of Premier League and UEFA spending limits by a very large amount.

The commission also found that evidence given by a number of important factual witnesses called to give evidence on behalf of the club was "false in a number of key respects". It further found that "certain of those factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest".