CAS panel rules on how UEFA failed to prove case against awkward City
LAUSANNE: Neither Manchester City or UEFA emerged unscathed from the 93-page reasoned judgment from the CAS panel who upheld the club’s appeal against a two-year European competition ban for breaching financial fair play rules.
City’s ban and €30m fine was downgraded by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to a fine of €10m by the three-man panel who ruled that City had not disguised disputed revenues as an over-the-top owners’ investment but had failed to cooperate appropriately with UEFA’s investigation.
Other issues were either not established or out of the five-year time limitation.
The written findings criticised City for a “severe breach” by failing to co-operate with UEFA’s investigation while clarifying that the club did ultimately provide CAS with all of the emails that had formed the basis of UEFA’s charges.
UEFA’s investigation followed a leak of documents in November 2018.
The verdict said: “The panel is of the view that UEFA by no means filed frivolous charges against City but based on the evidence the panel cannot reach the conclusion that disguised funding was paid to City . . . [but] City’s failure to co-operate with the investigation is a severe breach and City are to be seriously reproached.”
CAS said UEFA maintained the club “on countless occasions refused to answer questions, refused to provide documents, refused to arrange for the attendance of requested persons and – ultimately – it even instructed its own expert witness not to answer specific questions”.
However, Cas said it only found two specific requests in which City failed to comply with its duty of co-operation.
UEFA considered the case as having represented “the most serious, sophisticated, deliberate and fundamental attempt to circumvent and violate basic financial fair play principles” but CAS ruled that its submissions had not satisfied a majority of the panel of a burden of proof.
Charges relating to communications company Etisalat were disregarded because they were more than five years old and CAS assessed that City could have won the initial case, avoiding a vast amount of time and expense, had the club co-operated earlier.
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