A mystery figure from the United Arab Emirates paid Manchester City £30 million, a leaked report has revealed

A mystery figure from the United Arab Emirates paid Manchester City £30 million, a leaked report has revealed.

A report in England from The Times has revealed that Manchester City were given two payments of £15 million in 2012 and 2013, both of which were made by a mystery figure from the United Arab Emirates. The money did not come from a sponsorship deal and journalist Matt Lawton says that “UEFA couldn’t identify who he was”.

However, last year the Premier League announced it had charged the champions with 115 offences, alleging that they had inaccurately reported their finances over a nine-year period up to 2018. 

According to The Times, who have seen the leaked report, the alleged payments are thought to be included in the 115 charges, which City have said they will fight. 

Unlike UEFA, and in a potentially significant difference, the Premier League’s rulebook means none of the alleged offences will be time-barred.

City declined to comment.

The report adds that in a UEFA disciplinary hearing City’s lawyer named the person who paid the money as Jaber Mohamed, saying he was ‘in the business of providing financial and brokering services to commercial entities in the UAE’.

UEFA add in the report that the ‘obvious question’ which was ‘not answered at any point’ is why either the company or the club’s owners ‘should have needed any financial assistance from a broker in paying the Etisalat sponsorship liabilities’. The club are under investigation by the Premier League for 115 alleged breaches of the league’s financial rules, and this incident is said to be one of the many on the list. The story from The Times says that a report from Uefa’s financial control body was “produced in 2020 but never published” and that it “concludes that the two £15 million payments from 2012 and 2013 were made to cover sums that were supposed to have come from one of their main sponsors”.

They concluded that the payments, meant to have arrived from UAE-owned telecoms firm Etisalat, were actually ‘disguised equity funding’. The man who provided the money was named by City lawyers during UEFA disciplinary hearing as Jaber Mohamed: “We think he is not far removed from the people that run the [UAE]”, said Lawton.

UEFA’s financial control body concluded that the payments, meant to have arrived from UAE-owned telecoms firm Etisalat, were actually ‘disguised equity funding’. It alleged the money actually came from City’s Abu Dhabi-based owners, which was a breach of their rules.

City were found guilty of ‘serious breaches’ of financial fair play regulation by UEFA between 2012 and 2016 and handed a two-year Champions League ban. However, they appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), who overturned the ban and reduced the accompanying fine from 30m euros to 10m euros.