Manchester City under fire again after leaked documents

It’s been two years since Manchester City were threatened with elimination from the Champions League. Although they were allowed to continue in the competition after an appeal to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and no punishment was ultimately meted out for the breach of the rules at the time, new allegations are coming to light today.

The information came on 7 April from the German Spiegel in cooperation with the journalistic network European Investigative Collaborations (EIC). Based on documents published by the whistleblower platform Football Leaks, they reveal the significant involvement of the United Arab Emirates in the ownership and financing of the reigning Premier League champion.

The official owner is Sheikh Mansour, a member of the royal family and Abu Dhabi’s Deputy Prime Minister for Presidential Affairs. He took control of the team in 2008 and has since taken it from grey mediocrity to the top of English football.

Massive investment not only in infrastructure but also in transfers has helped significantly. According to the CIES Football Observatory, the Citizens have spent €1.7 billion on transfers in the last 10 years.

Links to the state

Sheikh Mansour owns Manchester City through a company called Abu Dhabi United Group for Investment & Development (ADUG). The latter was alleged to have broken the rules by paying sums in the millions to players’ agents and organising secret negotiations to sign players under the age of 16.

Abu Dhabi officials insist that ADUG is a private company and its investment in the English club and other clubs within the City Football Group is Sheikh Mansour’s private business. And even during testimony at CAS, a representative of the finance ministry confirmed that ADUG is not linked to the state in any way.

But Spiegel and the EIC have uncovered new facts. According to them, ADUG’s payments have always been approved by the state; moreover, the company’s accounts are supposed to be managed by the Executive Affairs Authority (EAA), a state agency focused on strategic policy advice and communications.

The head of this agency, who approved the money going into Manchester City’s accounts, is Khaldoon Al Mubarak, head of the sovereign wealth fund and chairman of the Manchester team. In addition, the club’s requests for payments were to go through the EAA’s general board.

Was Blatter inspired by Mancini?

According to Spiegel, the current investigation is focusing on three areas in which Manchester City was alleged to have broken UEFA rules. One of them is the pressure to sign contracts between the club and underage players using monetary sums.

If the transfer involves a player under the age of sixteen, it must not be a cross-border transfer and must not involve any financial transactions other than payment directly to the club. Thus, players, parents and agents are not entitled to monetary remuneration, and in particular the fees to the players’ representatives are at the heart of the matter. Chelsea, for example, have been punished for similar offences against the rules in the recent past.

Furthermore, the Abu Dhabi club’s sponsors are suspected of providing only part of the funds mentioned, the rest should have come directly from Sheikh Mansour. However, the involvement of the current Italian national team coach Roberto Mancini is proving to be a surprising part of the investigation. He coached the Citizens from 2009-2013, during which time he managed to win the Citizens’ first title since the 1967/68 season. But success did not come in the European Cups and so he was replaced by Manuel Pellegrini for the next three years.

The compensation Mancini received from the club proves problematic. In fact, it is supposed to be a significantly higher amount than the club officially admitted. The money was supposed to have been paid to the Italian coach under a fictitious consultancy contract.

This is not the first time that potentially illegal payments have been hidden behind consultancy work. Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini took a similar approach, costing them the positions of FIFA and UEFA chief respectively in 2015.

Spiegel, Football Observatory