Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano was grilled on television moments after the Premier League confirmed the club were guilty of the most serious breaches of the financial rules.
An independent commission ruled that Man City had disguised payments worth £900m in a nine-year period peppered with ‘sham’ deals.
In a damning 40-page verdict City artificially inflated sponsorship agreements and pumped money into the club from its Abu Dhabi owners via disguised payments in a bid to swerve Premier League spending rules.
The eight-times champions were found guilty of ‘all charges related to serious breaches’ of the regulations and the majority of those in relation to its failure to co-operate with the competition’s probe.
City witnesses were also accused of lying in front of the three-person panel, in an explosive verdict that will further send shockwaves through football after news of the club’s guilt first leaked on Friday.
Soriano, who has served as Man City chief executive since 2012, was approached at the European Football Clubs meeting in Copenhagen by Sky News reporter Rob Harris immediately after the blistering verdict had been delivered.
Man City chief executive Ferran Soriano was grilled on television moments after the Premier League confirmed the club were guilty of the most serious breaches of the financial rules.
Soriano claimed he had ‘nothing to say’ after being questioned by Sky News on whether Man City were a ‘sham club’ following the verdict, before eventually walking away
‘The Premier League confirms you cheated for nearly a decade, do you apologise to football fans,’ Harris began.
‘I have nothing to say, thank you,’ Soriano responded, before turning away from Harris.
Soriano continued to look away as Harris asked ‘Are you sure you can win on appeal? Is all this success as the Premier League says “sham contracts”, is this a sham club?’
The Man City chief eventually turned again to face Harris and responded ‘Thank you, thank you, I have nothing to say.’
Soriano began walking away through the conference centre as he was asked ‘Do you not have a message for football when you have cheated for so long, do you not have an obligation?’
‘I said thank you,’ Soriano replied.
Soriano’s refusal to engage with the questions came as the Man City chief featured in a video message sent to staff, which vowed to ‘clear the club’s name’.
He claimed the Premier League’s entire case against City was based on a ‘single false accusation’ and labelled it as a ‘conspiracy theory’, while he alleged the commission ignored extensive ‘evidence’ submitted by the club.
Soriano sent a video message to staff vowing to ‘clear the club’s name’ after the club was found guilty of breaking financial rules
Vowing to continue City’s legal fight in an effort to protect their reputation, he told staff: ‘The whole Premier League case against us is based on a single false accusation – that the owner’s personal money was somehow and secretly put into the club via some sponsors from Abu Dhabi.
‘This is just not true. Irrefutable evidence has been provided to the Premier League commission that shows it could not happen and that it did not happen. This includes bank statements, money transfers, witnesses and everything necessary to categorically demonstrate the money did not come from the owner.
‘Every other false charge that has been thrown at us comes from that simple, central and completely false accusation.
‘Surprisingly for us and our lawyers after nearly two years the Premier League’s commission has issued an opinion that supports the Premier League’s conspiracy theory.
‘To do so, the opinion had to ignore the extensive evidence provided by the club in order to reach a conclusion that is clearly wrong. Our lawyers will now file an appeal that sets out the opinion contains clear, material errors of law, principle and fact and that it is unsafe.
‘Remember, we have been here before. In 2020 we were also wrongly ruled against for many of the same issues. We appealed to CAS and we won. We will now be relentless in our work.
‘We will focus on the independent appeal process and also all other legal avenues available to us in order to win the case and we will take all necessary action to protect the club and seek compensation from any party that tries to damage it.’
While Soriano delivered a defiant message in return to the verdict, football fans were drawn to the Man City chief executive appearing not to blink throughout a video that lasted for over three and a half minutes.
Fans have speculated that the clip of Soriano was created or edited with the use of AI
Some suggested the clip of Soriano had been either created or edited with AI.
‘It is being pointed out that Soriano does not blink in a video lasting over three minutes,’ one wrote. ‘So is this video real, or AI doctored. If so, why? Not a time to appear to lack veracity.
‘They’re using AI to hide the fact Ferran Soriano is reading from a teleprompter. Man didn’t blink for 3 minutes straight,’ another wrote.
‘It even looks like AI from the movement… that ain’t natural…,’ a third said.
In the verdict, published on Tuesday, the independent panel found City arranged ‘sham contracts (which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties) with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on ‘sham’ agreements with others, to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs’.
It added that the panel, whose hearing concluded in December 2024, had found that the club had falsely altered the financial picture at the Etihad to the tune of £900million.
The Premier League said that City was actually ‘significantly in breach of both the Premier League’s and UEFA’s spending limits’ during the time period in question – 2009-2018 – when it won eight major trophies.
Deals with a number of sponsors were part of ‘a disguised funding scheme, whereby those companies were only required to pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees’, the statement added, saying that ‘the remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club’.
The panel also found further ‘sham’ arrangements, funded by ADUG, which allowed City to record lower operating expenses than it incurred, along with a ‘”sham” circular arrangement with Fordham, an entity that purchased the club’s players’ image rights, that was funded by ADUG’.
The result was that the club had ‘filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators’.
City were found guilty of a series of breaches over a nine-year, glittering period in its history
Had City reported accurately ‘it would have been in breach of both the League’s and UEFA’s spending limits by a very substantial amount’.
The panel also found that City committed multiple breaches of its duties of co-operation and good faith in that it failed to assist the Premier League’s four-year investigation, triggered by the emergence of club emails obtained by a hacker.
Instead, City had ‘made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the Premier League investigation’.
All punishments, including expulsion, transfer bans and points deductions are open to the Premier League and a sanction hearing will take place in due course.
In Man City’s statement shared in the wake of the release, the club claimed that it had ‘irrefutable evidence’ that proved its innocence.
‘The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements uncompleted,’ the statement continued. ‘Manchester City will now pursue the appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.’
READ MORE: OLIVER HOLT: Man City have been exposed as the most famous cheats in English sporting history. The gory details revealed by the Premier League leave no doubt – nothing less than relegation will suffice for this sinister, dishonest club
READ MORE: IAN HERBERT: I exposed Man City’s cheating and sham deals eight years ago – their threatening response was the most shocking experience of my 30-year career… but today I feel vindicated
