Man City accused of taking £30 million ‘sponsorship’ payments

LONDON – Manchester City have once again landed themselves in the spotlight over their alleged financial breaches, according to an exclusive report published by The Times of London on Thursday.

The English Premier League club, who won a historic treble in the recently concluded season, are accused of receiving £30 million (S$51.4 million) – disguised as sponsorship funding – from a mystery figure.

In February, it was revealed that City were charged by the Premier League for “more than 100” breaches of its financial rules. The Times reported that the latest revelation is thought to be included in the 115 charges.

According to a 2020 unpublished report by Uefa obtained by the makers of a YouTube documentary focusing on City’s breaches, and seen by The Times, the club took two £15 million payments from an Abu Dhabi-based individual in 2012 and 2013, sums that should have come from a club sponsor.

Uefa’s club financial control body (CFCB) said that the payments, meant to have arrived from UAE-owned telecoms firm Etisalat, were in fact from City’s Abu Dhabi owners, which was a breach of the rules. The mystery figure had supposedly acted as a broker between the two parties.

In The Times article, reporters Martyn Ziegler and Matt Lawton revealed the details of the Uefa report. “The adjudicatory committee of Uefa’s club financial control board’s report concludes that the payments, which were supposed to come from the UAE’s majority state-owned telecommunications company Etisalat, were actually ‘disguised equity funding’,” it read.

It went on to say that the CFCB alleged that “the funding came from City’s owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the investment group headed by Abu Dhabi’s vice-president, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan”.

“The (CFCB) report says that during a Uefa disciplinary hearing, City’s lawyer named the person who paid the money as ‘Jaber Mohamed’ and stated that he was ‘a person in the business of providing financial and brokering services to commercial entities in the UAE’,” said The Times.

“... The obvious question, not answered at any point in the club’s submission and evidence, (is) why either Etisalat or ADUG should have needed any financial assistance from a broker in paying the Etisalat sponsorship liabilities.”

The CFCB report concluded by saying that “payments were made or caused to be made by ADUG but attributed to the sponsorship obligations of Etisalat so as to disguise the true purpose of equity funding, and those arrangements were carried into effect by the payments made by Jaber Mohamed totalling £30 million.

“The management of the club was well aware that the payments were made as equity funding, not as payments for the sponsor on account of genuine sponsorship liabilities.”

City have declined to comment.

Ziegler and Lawton added: “Sources with knowledge of the Uefa case have told The Times that investigators were unable to verify the identity of Mohamed.”

Before the latest 115 charges imposed on the club that involved a period from 2009 to 2018, City were found guilty of financial fair play breaches by Uefa between 2012 and 2016 and handed a two-year Champions League ban.

However, they appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which then overturned the ban and reduced the accompanying fine from €30 million (S$44.1 million) to €10 million.

City are said to believe that geopolitical motives are behind the latest leak by the documentary’s makers, who have kept their identities secret, amid a backdrop of tensions in the Gulf, particularly between the UAE and Qatar.

However, according to The Times, they have denied that they are funded by any Middle Eastern countries or agencies.