ZURICH: French champions Paris St Germain have been cleared of breaking UEFA’s break-even rules following last summer’s transfer spending spree, European football’s governing body said on Wednesday.

However, UEFA said the Qatari-owned club’s finances would remain under close scrutiny.

PSG bought Brazil forward Neymar for €222m, more than double the previous price paid for a player, and later signed Kylian Mbappe on loan from AS Monaco with an option to buy after one season.

That deal was reported to be worth 180 million euros.

UEFA said it had closed the investigation and that the club’s transfers from that period “were in line with the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations”.

The decision followed a detailed review of transfer contracts and analysis of the related management accounts, UEFA said.

It added that PSG’s results for the financial years ending in 2015, 2016 and 2017 were accepted under the break-even rule, known as Financial Fair Play.

UEFA said more recent transfer activities “will remain under close scrutiny and will be thoroughly looked at in the coming weeks”.

FFP rules ban clubs from spending more than their generated revenue, a policy introduced to prevent rich owners from trying to buy success and distorting the transfer market.

Clubs can ultimately be kicked out of European competition for flouting the rules although until now UEFA has tried to negotiate settlements with offenders.

In further decisions Turkish club Galatasaray have been fined six million euros (£5.2 million) for not complying with UEFA’s break-even requirement.

Under a new agreement between UEFA and Galatasaray, the club will need to reach full break-even compliance by monitoring period 2021-2022, the Club Financial Control Body said in a statement on UEFA’s website here.html.

Galatasaray will need to report a maximum break-even deficit as forecast in their 2018 financial year report, it said. The maximum deficit will be 20 million euros in 2019 and 10 million euros in 2020.

The club will have to pay an additional 9 million euro fine if it fails to meets the requirements of the agreement.

Galatasaray became Turkish league champions for a record 21st time last month.

UEFA said it also concluded that Besiktas has fully complied with its targets under a previous settlement agreement for the 2017-2018 season.

It said Fenerbahce and Trabzonspor had partially fulfilled their targets under respective agreements and that transfer restrictions and limitations on player numbers would continue to apply in the 2018-2019 season.

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