UEFA’s Man City probe ruled £30m from owners disguised as sponsor money – report

UEFA’s investigation into Manchester City concluded that two £15million payments from a broker was funding from the club’s owners disguised as sponsorship revenue.

The report by the adjudicatory committee of UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) is effectively the written reasons behind the decision announced in February 2020 to suspend City from European competition for two years.

The report was never published because the club appealed against the decision and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) later overturned the CFCB verdict, but it has been obtained by the makers of a YouTube film released on Thursday, and has also been seen by The Times.

UEFA did not comment on the report when contacted by the PA news agency on Friday.

The report said City’s lawyers had told a UEFA disciplinary hearing that two £15m sponsorship payments from telecommunications firm Etisalat in 2012 and 2013 were made by a man called Jaber Mohammed, who was described as a broker, and that Etisalat repaid the money to City’s owners in 2015.

The Times reports that the adjudicatory committee of the CFCB concluded:  “Arrangements were made under which payments were made or caused to be made by ADUG (Abu Dhabi United Group, a private equity fund controlled by City owner Sheikh Mansour) 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 £30million.

“The management of the club was well aware that the payments totalling £30million made by Jaber Mohamed were made as equity funding, not as payments for the sponsor on account of genuine sponsorship liabilities.”

CAS overturned the two-year suspension in July 2020, and in its judgement it said UEFA should not have dealt with the charges related to Etisalat because they had passed the five-year time limit. It is not known whether the Etisalat payments form part of the Premier League’s ongoing case against City, where they face 115 charges over alleged breaches of the league’s financial rules and a failure to co-operate with the investigation, but, if they do, they would not be time-barred.

In the same judgement, the CAS panel also stated it was “not comfortably satisfied” that City had disguised equity funding from Sheikh Mansour or ADUG as sponsorship contributions from the Etihad airline.

It said in relation to the Etihad sponsorship: “There is not sufficient evidence on file to establish that arrangements were actually made between MCFC and HHSM (Sheikh Mansour) and/or ADUG, or between HHSM and/or ADUG and Etihad, or that HHSM and/or ADUG funded part of Etihad’s sponsorship obligations directly.

“In the absence of a link being proven…the majority of the panel finds that UEFA’s theory on disguised equity funding remains unsubstantiated.”

City have not commented on the latest report, but it is understood they believe questions should be asked about the origins of the funding for the new YouTube film, and the motivations of those who provided that funding.

Little is known about the company behind it, Sunrise Media, which was registered in the British Virgin Islands on June 9.