November 6 – More damaging allegations about financial impropriety have emerged from Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine, this time pointing the finger squarely at Manchester City in the first of a four-part instalment about the club’s activities.
Last week the German news magazine, based on information emanating from the Football Leaks whistle-blowing website, reported that Europe’s elite clubs were planning a breakaway super league to start in 2021 and separately claimed FIFA president Gianni was complicit in helping both City and Paris St Germain gain more lenient sanctions for breaching financial fair play rules when he was at UEFA.
Now, in further revelations based on internal documents seen by Der Spiegel, City are again in the firing line amid accusations that they and their sponsors bent the rules by manipulating contracts to circumvent UEFA’s FFP regulations.
Der Spiegel claims it has seen internal documents which show that City officials discussed how to wipe out a £9.9 million shortfall in 2013 and that owner Sheikh Mansour provided monetary supplements to existing deals with sponsors in Abu Dhabi to invest more into the club.
Although UEFA found City had breached FFP rules in 2014 and the two parties reached a settlement agreement, there was widespread suspicion concerning inflated sponsorship deals and Der Spiegel claims UEFA “wasn’t even entirely aware of the degree to which it had been deceived”.
La Liga boss Javier Tebas has frequently accused City of being one of those clubs guilty of “financial doping” and in its latest article, Der Spiegel wrote that the reigning English Premier League champions, one of the richest clubs in the world, had “walked all over the FFP rules”, a claim that is bound to provoke considerable concern among City’s European and domestic rivals.
UEFA, however, does not intend to launch an investigation into the new allegations, at this point at least, saying it “cannot comment on specific cases due to confidentiality obligations”.
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