Sham contracts with some of their commercial partners have been created by Manchester City as a part of the scheme aimed at concealing more than £830m in hidden funds, according to the Premier League.
The League clarified that Manchester City have been found guilty of all the allegations against them regarding the breach of financial regulations of the Premier League from 2009-10 to 2017-18 seasons.
According to BBC Sport, the investigation carried out by an independent commission found that in that time period, the club created the “sham contracts” as well as “utilizing the sham agreements to artificially boost the club’s revenues and reduce its costs”.
The club refuses to admit any wrongdoings and until 2 October, they can file an appeal.
It became known last week that the team had been found guilty of violating the most of the 115 financial rules, however, on Tuesday, the Premier League released the redacted version of the report.
According to the commission’s report, the charges “related to well over 100 alleged individual violations of Premier League Rules in four broad categories of charge”.
Additionally, they accused the club of all the charges, except the one associated with the failure of the club to cooperate with the Premier League inquiry.
The fake commercial transactions were said to be included in the “disguised funding structure” amounting to £830.69m.
Manchester City earned £360m from sponsorships during the three seasons they won the league title – 2011-12, 2013-14, and 2017-18. Out of that figure, only £43m was legitimate, while the remaining part was fake.
“The relevant sponsorship agreements were found to be shams, or at minimum did not reflect their economic substance,” the commission said.
It also describes “deliberate or reckless conduct intended to circumvent the Premier League rules” and that the “sham” scheme devised by City allowed the club “to avoid recording what would otherwise have been the largest single-season loss in Premier League history in 2009-10”.
The commission highlighted the scale of evidence it had to consider by pointing out that the index alone ran to more than 750 pages, while the core bundle of documents “ran to many tens of thousands of pages”.
