Evidence previously given by Manchester City to UEFA has returned to the spotlight as the club challenges the findings of the Premier League’s independent commission.
According to The Times, the issue concerns two £15m payments made in 2012 and 2013 in connection with City’s sponsorship agreement with Abu Dhabi telecommunications company Etisalat.
The newspaper reports that City told UEFA more than six years ago that the payments had been made by Jaber Mohamed, who was described during those proceedings as someone providing financial and brokering services to commercial organisations in the UAE. It subsequently emerged that Mohamed was, at the time, general director of Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Court.
Previous evidence back in focus
The Times has raised questions over how that earlier evidence sits alongside the case City presented during the more recent Premier League proceedings.
The independent commission’s findings record City’s position that Abu Dhabi sponsors had at times received financial assistance from the Abu Dhabi government through the Crown Prince Court. City maintained that none of the relevant sponsorship fees had been funded by Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group.
The Times reports that City had previously told UEFA that, in relation to the two Etisalat payments, “the payment was caused to be made by ADUG”.
UEFA’s adjudicatory body concluded that the £30m represented equity funding attributed to Etisalat’s sponsorship obligations. The Court of Arbitration for Sport later ruled that the Etisalat allegations were time-barred, meaning it did not determine whether those particular payments amounted to disguised equity funding.
That is an important distinction. CAS considered other allegations in City’s UEFA case on their merits, but the Etisalat payments were not decided that way because of the time limit.
Appeal Board will decide
The Premier League proceedings are separate and are not subject to the same UEFA limitation period. Manchester City have formally appealed against the independent commission’s findings, maintaining that the opinion contains “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact” and insisting they are innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League.
City declined to comment to The Times when asked about what the newspaper described as an apparent inconsistency between the evidence presented in the two cases.
It will be for the Appeal Board to decide what significance, if any, the earlier UEFA evidence has for City’s challenge. For now, The Times report has brought the account given over the two £15m payments back into focus as the appeal process gets under way.
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