Cheques and the City: Premier League disgrace

Manchester City, the most successful English football club of the past 15 years, has been found guilty of more than 100 breaches of Premier League financial rules. An independent commission concluded that the club’s ownership used inflated sponsorship contracts to overstate income by more than £830 million, money that funded the player acquisitions that transformed a mediocre second-tier team into a record-breaking European champion. The club denies the charges and is expected to appeal, but the ruling opens the door to potentially severe sanctions and lawsuits from rival clubs.

The case against City

The charges stem from an eight-year investigation into Manchester City’s finances following its 2008 takeover by the Abu Dhabi United Group, whose majority owner is Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nayan, vice president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates. Before the takeover, City was a second-tier club playing in the third division of English football as recently as 1998. The Premier League’s financial rules are designed to prevent owners from pumping unlimited money into clubs by limiting spending relative to revenue. According to the verdict, City circumvented those rules through sham sponsorship deals — arrangements that allowed the club to record £600 million more in commercial income than rivals such as Arsenal, Chelsea, or Liverpool during a period when City was