Man City 115 charges requests revealed as Liverpool brace for verdict

Government chiefs have requested information on Manchester City’s financial battle with the Premier League, as has the British Embassy in Dubai, a new report says. It is claimed that these requests were made prior to the start of the ongoing hearing, which began in September.

The commission is not expected to return its verdict until 2025, with Liverpool and other clubs kept in the dark about the details of the legal hearing in the meantime. Man City deny all allegations of wrongdoing, which tally at more than 100.

The Premier League has inferred it cannot share information on the hearing, which concludes this month, given it involves private shareholders. In the year before the hearing began, former Foreign Secretary James Cleverly asked for “an update on the UAE/Manchester City issue”.

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Partially-redacted emails obtained by The Times from a Freedom of Information request to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) show that this request was made in September 2023. They also reveal that the British Embassy in Dubai asked for the latest guidance around the case in May of this year.

This is said to have been made in light of ‘a report that a settlement in the City case could avoid wider political issues’, the Times claims. Man City are owned by Sheikh Mansour, who is the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In the emails, the FCDO makes clear that the hearing is completely independent and has no governmental influence. They further indicate that the charges might have been discussed by Government officials during a visit to the UAE in the days after the allegations were first levelled in February 2023.

And two weeks before Cleverly made his request, Treasury secretary James Bowler held a meeting with Matthew Hurn, chief financial official of Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund. Part of memo refers to “Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, who is Chairman of Manchester City FC, is CEO and Managing Director”.

The meeting apparently involved talk around the “UK-UAE Sovereign Investment Partnership (SIP)”. Significant sections of the content of the emails were redacted for national security and relations reasons.

Separately, Premier League chief Richard Masters has explained why he is not sharing information regarding the legal battle with Man City. "Quite simply, it's not within our rules to be able to do so,” he told the BBC in August.

“What we do is we publish charges when they are made and we publish decisions when they are made. The bit in between is managed by an independent panel and they're very clear that they want that process to be confidential."