In an anonymous conference room at an undisclosed location, the most significant legal case football has ever known is about to get under way, with Manchester City’s credibility as the outstanding side of this era at stake.
The process will be shrouded in unprecedented secrecy. It took a courtroom challenge from Mail Sport simply to allow us to report that the Premier League had taken a legal route to force City to give them evidence, as part of their investigation. Our barrister, Jude Bunting KC, won that argument, after going up against Lord Pannick KC, who will lead City’s defence team when the case begins on Monday.
But behind closed doors, for an expected 10 weeks, City will strenuously deny charges that they swerved financial fair play rules to spend more than they were entitled to on players who helped turn them into the Premier League’s dominant force.
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The League’s case, being considered by an independent disciplinary commission, is expected to centre on claims that City’s Abu Dhabi owners funnelled cash into the club, some of it disguised as sponsorship revenue, to create a healthy financial picture and enable a level of spending which would not fall foul of FFP.
No fewer than 54 of the 115 claimed rule breaches relate to City’s alleged failure to provide accurate financial information about the club’s revenues. Much of the evidence may be pulled from a cache of emails brought to light by the so-called Football Leaks website, run by a Portuguese self-taught computer mastermind Rui Pinto, which was published by German magazine Der Spiegel in 2018.
It is quite likely that Pinto’s own credibility and reputation will be at the nub of the argument Lord Pannick puts to the commission. For some, the Portuguese is a controversial figure, currently at a safe house for his own protection, because of revelations which extend far beyond City. City say he is nothing less than a hacker, but he is a real danger to them now. His revelations were central to a UEFA investigation into the club, which saw them suspended from European competition for offences occurred too far in the past to pass UEFA’S five-year cut-off for bringing charges.
The clock will not help City this time. There is no ‘time bar’ on the evidence the Premier League will bring. But they strongly believe they can win the case and emerge from the shadow which has been hanging over them since they were charged, two years ago.
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