Eight years after the first leaked emails appeared in a German magazine, an independent commission has found Manchester City guilty of breaking the majority of the 115 financial charges brought against them by the Premier League. Sources have told BBC Sport the verdict has been reached. What nobody can tell you yet is what it costs the club, because the panel has not published its sanctions, or even its written judgement.
City's response on Friday was not a denial of the finding. It was a complaint about the leak. The club said the process "remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality", and restated the position it has held since February 2023, adding that it had respected due process for eight years on the understanding the Premier League board would act as an impartial regulator free from partisan influence. Read that last clause twice. It reads like the opening line of an appeal.
What the 115 charges actually cover
The bulk of them are paperwork. Fifty-four relate to a failure to provide accurate financial information between 2009-10 and 2017-18, and another fourteen to inaccurate details of player and manager payments over the same nine seasons. Seven concern the Premier League's own profit and sustainability rules from 2015-16 to 2017-18, and five concern Uefa's financial fair play regime. Then there are thirty-five separate charges of failing to co-operate with the investigation itself, covering the period from December 2018 to February 2023. That last group is the one that turned a financial case into something closer to a four-year argument about disclosure.
Underneath the numbering sits the Der Spiegel material. The allegation was that sponsorship income from Etihad and Etisalat was inflated by routing money from Sheikh Mansour's Abu Dhabi United Group through those companies' accounts, so that direct investment arrived on the books looking like commercial revenue. Later claims centred on consultancy payments said to have reached Roberto Mancini through a club in Abu Dhabi, and on players being paid more than the accounts recorded. City have always argued ADUG is a private fund rather than an arm of the state, and called the leaked emails illegally obtained.
The punishment is the open question
Everything is still on the table. A points deduction, immediate or suspended. A fine, immediate or suspended. Expulsion from the Premier League, which would mean losing membership and dropping a division at the end of the season. A points penalty severe enough would do the same job by a different route. Nobody outside the process knows who sat on the commission, and that only becomes public with the written judgement.
There is a precedent for the money side that should worry City more than the fine. In June, Everton were ordered to pay Burnley £35m over a breach of the profit and sustainability rules in 2021-22, made up of £26m in damages and £9m in interest, after Burnley argued the breach had cost them their place in the division. Clubs who finished behind City during the nine seasons in question could try the same argument, though each claim would need its own hearing.
Titles, appeals and the length of the road ahead
City won the league three times inside the charged period, in 2011-12, 2013-14 and 2017-18, along with the 2011 FA Cup and three League Cups. If the commission chose to strip and reassign them, Manchester United would take two titles and Liverpool one. That is a very big if, and it is worth saying plainly that nothing in the reported verdict suggests it is coming.
An appeal is close to automatic. Lord Pannick KC, who led the case that overturned City's two-year European ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2020 and who is reported to charge £5,000 an hour, is expected to lead it again. This time the route stops at the Premier League's own appeal board rather than CAS. Given the hearing opened on 16 September 2024 and ran ten weeks, and given Pep Guardiola was telling reporters in February 2025 that a verdict was a month away, anyone putting a date on the end of this is guessing.
Case facts: 115 charges laid in February 2023, covering alleged breaches between 2009 and 2018. Hearing opened 16 September 2024 and ran for ten weeks. Sources told BBC Sport on Friday 25 September 2026 that City were found guilty of the majority. Sanctions and the written judgement are still to be published. City deny wrongdoing and an appeal is expected. Source: BBC Sport (Dale Johnson).
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