Premier League confirms Man City guilty of all charges

Manchester City have been found guilty of all charges related to breaches of Premier League financial rules between 2009-10 and 2017-18 by an independent commission, the league has said.

The Premier League said the independent commission found City arranged 'sham' commercial deals with a number of its sponsors during the period, which were part of a disguised funding scheme, whereby those companies were only required to pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees.

The commission found that the remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club.

The league said that now the charges have been proved, the issue of sanction will be addressed separately in a further hearing with the independent commission.

Richard Masters, the chief executive of the Premier League, called the case and decision "the most significant in Premier League history".

Further "sham arrangements" the club were found to have entered into enabled the club to record lower operating expenses than they actually incurred, the Premier League’s published statement said.

The scheme was found to have inflated the club’s revenues and reduced their costs by more than £900million during the affected period.

The commission found the club had therefore filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators.

The commission concluded that "by its conduct the club clearly intended to circumvent the Premier League rules."

Manchester City say they will now pursue an appeal "on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe."

The commission found that had information been accurately reported, the club would have been in breach of Premier League and UEFA spending limits "by a very large amount".

The club were also found to have committed multiple breaches of their duty to co-operate with the investigation, and tried to "stop and frustrate" the Premier League’s investigation, which began in 2018.

Masters said: "The core decision establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period. It details how the club systematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade.

"It also vindicates the Premier League’s decision to pursue this case against Manchester City. While the process to date has been both long and difficult, the league has remained determined that the facts be established independently.

"It is a key responsibility of the Premier League to ensure that the rules, approved by the clubs themselves, are upheld to protect the integrity of the competition. It is paramount that the league remains competitive and fair for all clubs and for the fans. We take that role extremely seriously."

Masters added: "This disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history. There are elements of the case that remain to be decided, including, importantly, what sanction must follow for these breaches. Now we have the Commission’s decision, we are committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process, to provide certainty for the league, our clubs and fans."

The commission said it was "regrettable" that a decision had taken so long to reach, with the hearing having taken place between September and December 2024.

The panel said it had access to all the documents that were used at the hearing as well as verbatim transcripts of the evidence given by each witness and expert at the hearing, running to more than 7,000 pages.