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Publish Date: Thursday, June 6, 2019 7:35 am
Manchester City has asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport to reject the case of financial fair play brought against them by the governing body of European football, UEFA.
The surprise decision is a pre-emptive strike, as the FFP case has not yet been heard by the UEFA Club Financial Control Board's judgment chamber.
Last month, Yves Leterme, head of the investigation group of the CFCB, decided that the champions of the Premier League had a case to answer. It is therefore understood that it has been recommended to ban them from the European club competition for at least one season.
There was no doubt that the city would have appealed such a sanction from the SAC but the club decided not to wait.
In a statement released on Thursday, the highest sports court in sport said it had registered an appeal by the city against UEFA.
"The appeal is lodged against the decisions made by the investigating chamber of the UEFA Club Financial Supervisory Body concerning alleged non-compliance by the city with the regulations of the UEFA club." UEFA in terms of club licensing and financial fair play, "he said.
"An arbitration procedure will now be initiated and involve an exchange of written submissions between the parties while a panel of CAS arbitrators is convened to hear the appeal."
"Once the panel has been formally constituted, it will publish a procedural calendar. It is not possible to say for the moment when the arbitration award will be made on this subject. "
Leterme, a former Belgian prime minister, opened his investigation on March 7 as a result of a series of reports in the German magazine Der Spiegel, which suggested that the club had cheated on UEFA regarding its finances.
UEFA's financial fair play rules have been in place since 2011 and have been put in place to solve the problem of European football debt and encourage teams to balance their accounts.
The champions of France and the city, Paris St Germain, were the first high-level clubs to break the rules in 2014.
City was fined £ 49 million for what UEFA saw as artificial inflation in "related party" agreements – in other words, companies related to their owner, Sheikh Mansour , member of the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi.
Although Protestant of their innocence, City accepted the sanction, which included a restriction on the size of its Champions League team, but was finally reimbursed two-thirds of its fine – £ 33m – in 2017 for having apparently respected the rules.
However, Leterme and his team now believe that City lied to them during this survey, especially about the true source of their sponsorship revenue and actual payroll.
In a very strong statement issued shortly after the dismissal of the case, Manchester City is "disappointed" by the decision of Leterme.
The city declared itself "quite confident of obtaining a positive result" because of "the ignorance of a set of irrefutable evidence".
"This decision contains errors, misinterpretations and confusions resulting fundamentally from a fundamental lack of due process and there remain important unresolved issues raised by Manchester City as part of what the club has ruled to be a totally unsatisfactory, limited and hostile process. " ".
It is not uncommon for disputes to be brought directly to the CAS, but it is usually when both parties agree that time is running out and that the problem eventually arrives at the CAS.
As there is no suggestion that UEFA is asking City to be removed from the Champions League next season, the club's decision represents a risk, as the CAS generally asks the appellants to have exhausted all the possibilities that it has. offer to them before a call.
The City declined to say anything about its appeal to the CAS and UEFA has not yet responded to requests for comment.
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