Manchester City appear to be in more trouble, as the Premier League champions have been accused of taking £30million from a mystery figure under the guise of sponsorship funding.
This was revealed in a 2020 UEFA report obtained by the makers of a YouTube film.
City are said to have received two £15m payments from an Abu Dhabi-based individual in 2012 and 2013, sums that should have come from a club sponsor.
UEFA’s financial control body concluded that the payments, meant to have arrived from UAE-owned telecoms firm Etisalat, were actually ‘disguised equity funding’. It alleged the money actually came from City’s Abu Dhabi-based owners, which was a breach of their rules.
City were found guilty of ‘serious breaches’ of financial fair play regulation by UEFA between 2012 and 2016 and handed a two-year Champions League ban. However, they appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), who overturned the ban and reduced the accompanying fine from 30m euros to 10m euros.
CAS said most of the alleged breaches ‘were either not established or time-barred’.