Manchester City have been found guilty of all charges relating to serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules over a nine-season period, the league has announced.
The league also said an independent commission had found City guilty of the majority of charges in relation to the club’s failure to cooperate with its investigation.
The commission found that City used schemes to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs by more than £900m during the affected period, so that the club would appear to comply with financial rules. The league said that between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons City arranged “sham” contracts — agreements that misrepresented the true arrangement between the parties — with a number of its commercial partners, filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from auditors and football regulators.
Had that information been reported accurately, the commission found, the club would have been in breach of both Premier League and Uefa spending limits “by a very large amount”. Any sanction will be addressed at a further hearing before the independent commission rather than settled by this decision.
City said they will appeal “on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”. The club added that it is “innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case”, and that it will be “relentless, and where necessary proactive, in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums”.
Richard Masters, the chief executive of the Premier League, said the core decision established the facts of what happened at Manchester City during the period and detailed how the club “systematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade”. He said the outcome vindicated the league’s decision to pursue the case against City, describing the process to date as long and difficult while saying the league had remained determined that the facts be established independently.